More than Just Collateral Damage: Pet Shootings by Police

The Department of Justice estimates that American police officers shoot 10,000 pet dogs in the line of duty each year. It is impossible to ascertain a reliable number, however, because most law enforcement agencies do not maintain accurate records of animal killings. The tally may be substantially higher, and some suggest it could reach six figures. Deferring to officers’ judgment when they reasonably fear for human safety is sound policy because they regularly must make split-second, life-or-death decisions in highly stressful situations; but many pet shootings occur when officers mistake the behavior of a friendly, curious dog for aggression. Further, some animals have been deliberately shot and killed under questionable circumstances, including through doors or while tied, running away, or hiding. Studies show that some officers shoot pets unnecessarily, recklessly, or in retaliation, and that subsequent civilian complaints are investigated inadequately. Moreover, not every animal that police officers shoot is a large dog that may be more likely to pose a genuine risk to human safety—or even a dog at all. Police claiming a threat to human safety have shot puppies, Chihuahuas, Miniature Dachshunds, and domestic cats, among other pets. In some tragic cases, bullets missed their nonhuman targets and injured or even killed human bystanders instead. Pet shootings can seriously damage public relations for law enforcement agencies, especially during an era when the news seems to be saturated with stories concerning police using excessive force against unarmed civilians. The American Civil Liberties Union even classifies pet shootings as one symptom of the increased militarization of American police forces. Additionally, lawsuits brought by bereaved owners can cost agencies and taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. This Article explores these and other related issues, and presents simple solutions to help reduce the number of companion animal shootings by police in the United States

Forward-Thinking: HR\u27s Path To Improving Its Worth

[Excerpt] Human Resources has only just begun to move past its transactional roots into a truly strategic and value-adding role. Popular television characters like Toby from NBC’s The Office have all but glamorized HR, leaving individuals with a somewhat negative perception of the Human Resources function. When you add to this the personal interactions that individuals have had in the past with small and strictly transactional HR departments, it is understandable that these negative perceptions exist. For critics and skeptics of HR, these observations constitute reality. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. This essay will explore how focusing on a more results-driven analytical approach, adapting to an evolving workforce, and increasing visibility within the organization will help HR better convey its value and continue to evolve at all levels of the company

Uranium isotopes quantitatively determined by modified method of atomic absorption spectrophotometry

Hollow-cathode discharge tubes determine the quantities of uranium isotopes in a sample by using atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Dissociation of the uranium atoms allows a large number of ground state atoms to be produced, absorbing the incident radiation that is different for the two major isotopes

Application of holography to flow visualization

Laser holographic interferometry is being applied to many different types of aerodynamics problems. These include two and three dimensional flows in wind tunnels, ballistic ranges, rotor test chambers and turbine facilities. Density over a large field is measured and velocity, pressure, and mach number can be deduced

A tomographic technique for aerodynamics at transonic speeds

Computer aided tomography (CAT) provides a means of noninvasively measuring the air density distribution around an aerodynamic model. This technique is global in that a large portion of the flow field can be measured. A test of the applicability of CAT to transonic velocities was studied. A hemispherical-nose cylinder afterbody model was tested at a Mach number of 0.8 with a new laser holographic interferometer at the 2- by 2-Foot Transonic Wind Tunnel. Holograms of the flow field were taken and were reconstructed into interferograms. The fringe distribution (a measure of the local densities) was digitized for subsequent data reduction. A computer program based on the Fourier-transform technique was developed to convert the fringe distribution into three-dimensional densities around the model. Theoretical aerodynamic densities were calculated for evaluating and assessing the accuracy of the data obtained from the tomographic method

RAPID ANALYTICAL VERIFICATION OF HANDWRITTEN ALPHANUMERIC ADDRESS FIELDS

Microsoft, Motorola, Siemens, Hitachi, IAPR, NICI, IUF This paper presents a combination of fuzzy system and dynamic analytical model to deal with imprecise data derived from feature extraction in handwritten address images which are compared against postulated addresses for address verification. A dynamic building­number locator is able to locate and recognise the building­number, without knowing exactly where the building­number starts in the candidate address line. The overall system achieved a correct sorting rate of 72.9%, 27.1% rejection rate and 0.0% error rate on a blind test set of 450 cursive handwritten addresses.

Implicit amenity prices and the location of retirees in England and Wales

General equilibrium models in which compensation for local amenities occurs in both housing and labour markets have been widely used to generate implicit amenity prices and regional quality of life indices. An implication and prospective test of such models is that individuals who are outside the labour market have an incentive to locate in regions where amenities are capitalised into wages. In this paper we construct a measure of the extent of amenity capitalisation into wages for each county in England and Wales. We then test the multimarket amenity model by applying this measure to county-level data on the location of retirees. Our results provide strong support for the mode

Learning in Real-Time Search: A Unifying Framework

Real-time search methods are suited for tasks in which the agent is interacting with an initially unknown environment in real time. In such simultaneous planning and learning problems, the agent has to select its actions in a limited amount of time, while sensing only a local part of the environment centered at the agents current location. Real-time heuristic search agents select actions using a limited lookahead search and evaluating the frontier states with a heuristic function. Over repeated experiences, they refine heuristic values of states to avoid infinite loops and to converge to better solutions. The wide spread of such settings in autonomous software and hardware agents has led to an explosion of real-time search algorithms over the last two decades. Not only is a potential user confronted with a hodgepodge of algorithms, but he also faces the choice of control parameters they use. In this paper we address both problems. The first contribution is an introduction of a simple three-parameter framework (named LRTS) which extracts the core ideas behind many existing algorithms. We then prove that LRTA*, epsilon-LRTA*, SLA*, and gamma-Trap algorithms are special cases of our framework. Thus, they are unified and extended with additional features. Second, we prove completeness and convergence of any algorithm covered by the LRTS framework. Third, we prove several upper-bounds relating the control parameters and solution quality. Finally, we analyze the influence of the three control parameters empirically in the realistic scalable domains of real-time navigation on initially unknown maps from a commercial role-playing game as well as routing in ad hoc sensor networks