Be Good: Hatred and Hope in the Letters of Gerald Koster

To tell an informative story about someone’s life is difficult at the best of times. Gerald “Gerry” Koster’s correspondence during his last year of service in the US Navy towards the end of the Pacific War can thus only paint an incomplete portrait of who he was and what exactly the war meant to him. Nevertheless, there are things that his letters can teach readers, not only about Koster’s role and daily activities in the military, but about his personal character and how that manifested in his interactions with the defeated Japanese and his family. And perhaps, through his personal character, it is possible to discern something larger about the culture of his specific time and place in history

“Reds Driven Off”: the US Media’s Propaganda During the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

In 2008, the Annenburg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a poll to determine just how informed voters were following that year’s presidential election. One of the most shocking things they found was that 46.4% of those polled still believed that Saddam Hussein played a role in the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11th, 2001. No evidence had ever emerged linking him to it after 5 years of war in Iraq, but that did not matter, as “voters, once deceived, tend to stay that way despite all evidence.” Botched initial reporting can permanently entrench false information into the public’s mind and influence them to come to faulty conclusions as a result. This power of first impressions gives journalists an immense and solemn responsibility when conveying events. A misleading headline or an unsubstantiated report can sway the public towards similarly flawed conclusions with disastrous results

INTERACTIVE SONIFICATION STRATEGIES FOR THE MOTION AND EMOTION OF DANCE PERFORMANCES

The Immersive Interactive SOnification Platform, or iISoP for short, is a research platform for the creation of novel multimedia art, as well as exploratory research in the fields of sonification, affective computing, and gesture-based user interfaces. The goal of the iISoP’s dancer sonification system is to “sonify the motion and emotion” of a dance performance via musical auditory display. An additional goal of this dissertation is to develop and evaluate musical strategies for adding layer of emotional mappings to data sonification. The result of the series of dancer sonification design exercises led to the development of a novel musical sonification framework. The overall design process is divided into three main iterative phases: requirement gathering, prototype generation, and system evaluation. For the first phase help was provided from dancers and musicians in a participatory design fashion as domain experts in the field of non-verbal affective communication. Knowledge extraction procedures took the form of semi-structured interviews, stimuli feature evaluation, workshops, and think aloud protocols. For phase two, the expert dancers and musicians helped create test-able stimuli for prototype evaluation. In phase three, system evaluation, experts (dancers, musicians, etc.) and novice participants were recruited to provide subjective feedback from the perspectives of both performer and audience. Based on the results of the iterative design process, a novel sonification framework that translates motion and emotion data into descriptive music is proposed and described

GETTING ACTIVE WITH PASSIVE CROSSINGS: INVESTIGATING THE EFFICACY OF IN-VEHICLE AUDITORY ALERTS FOR RAIL ROAD CROSSINGS

Train-vehicle collisions at highway-rail grade crossings continue to be a major issue in the US and across the world. Installing additional hardware at individual crossings is expensive, time consuming, and potentially ineffective. To prevent recent trends in safety improvement from plateauing, experts are turning towards novel warning devices that can be applied to all crossings with minimal cost. In-vehicle auditory alerts (IVAAs) could potentially remedy many of the human factor issues related to crossing safety in a cost effective manner. This thesis presents a series of experiments designing and testing an IVAA system for grade level railroad (RR) crossings. Study 1 collected subjective data on a pool of potential in-vehicle auditory alerts from 31 undergraduate participants. The type of IVAAs was varied along a number of dimensions (pitch, repetition, wave shape, wording, voice, etc.). Results from study 1 were used to design a prototype IVAA crossing notification system. A pilot study was conducted to calibrate the simulated driving scenario featuring multiple RR crossings and a compliance behavior coding procedure. Compliance behavior was operationalized as an amount of visual scanning and pedal depression. Study 2 recruited 20 undergraduate participants to drive in a medium fidelity driving simulator featuring four types of RR crossings with and without IVAAs. Results suggest that IVAAs not only inform and remind drivers of how to comply at RR crossings, but also have a lasting effect on driver behavior after the IVAA is no longer presented. Compliance scores were highest among novel RR crossing visual warnings such as crossbucks featuring STOP or YIELD signs. Compliance was lowest for crossbucks alone and active gates in the off position. IVAAs had the largest impact on compliance scores at crossbucks and gates. The discussion includes implications for designing IVAA systems for RR crossings, and the potential implementation of prototype systems as a smartphone application

Do Modern Japanese Inventory Methods Apply To Hong Kong?

The ability to achieve higher standards of productivity without sacrificing quality is an important goal of a manufacturing firm. A primary reason offered to explain Japanese firms’ successes has been the dominant role of the use of the Just-In-Time (JIT) operational philosophy (Mehra & Inman, 1992). If successfully implemented, JIT reduces inventory and ultimately results in reduction in manufacturing costs along with improvement in profitability (James, 1994).  There are three main manufacturing objectives for JIT (Suzaki, 1987).  One is increasing the organization's ability to compete with rival firms and remain competitive over the long run. JIT allows companies to develop optimal processes for manufacturing their products.  A second is increasing the degree of efficiency within the production process.  JIT allows greater level of productivity and minimizes the associated costs of production.  The third is reducing the level of wasted materials, time, and effort involved in the production process.  Elimination of unnecessary waste can significantly reduce costs of production.  Much of the literature concerned with the implementation of JIT deals specifically with elements that are crucial to successful implementation (Karen & Anthony, 1993).  This study looked at three of those elements; namely, management commitment, JIT production strategy, and JIT vendor strategy. If these "critical" elements are not present, the potential level of JIT implementation may be low.  The Hong Kong electronics/electrical manufacturing industry was chosen as the context for this study. A survey questionnaire based on the three main prerequisites of JIT implementation was developed and sent out in order to investigate whether JIT implementation could be carried out in Hong Kong. Both inferential analysis and descriptive analysis were used to interpret the results.  The study found (1) No significant relationship existed between management commitment and the potential level of JIT implementation, and (2) A significant relationship did exist between JIT production strategy and JIT vendor strategy and the potential level of JIT implementation

A Cost Analysis Case Study Of A Small Chinese Manufacturer

This study investigated whether a small firm, China Umbrella Factory Limited (CUFL), and in fact any firm in a developing country (mainland China), could benefit from a formal, activity-based costing system. Many small firms, even more so than larger firms, find themselves particularly vulnerable to competitive challenges because the smaller firms lack the know-how and resources to know their true costs and profit margins. Smaller firms tend to use heuristics, or rules-of-thumb, in their estimation of costs as opposed to the bonafide use of more sophisticated and validated costing systems, whether traditional or activity-based costing (ABC). Comparisons of this firm’s current estimations of costs were made using both of these costing systems. Results indicated differences across the three methods. It was discovered that cost distortions that disfavored the estimation and traditional methods favored the ABC method. Notwithstanding the benefits found with using ABC, the firm decided not to adopt this method. A major constraining factor rested with the limitation of human resources – particularly with training in ABC as well as general management accounting. Furthermore since ABC, in a greater fundamental sense, benefits firms with significant overhead (when measured as a proportion of total cost), ABC would only provide limited benefits relative to the cost of implementation given the low-tech, primarily labor-based nature of this firm and its products

The Effects of the Uncertainty of Departures on Multi-Center Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) Scheduling

The Multi-center Traffic Management Advisor (McTMA) provides a platform for regional or national traffic flow management, by allowing long-range cooperative time-based metering to constrained resources, such as airports or air traffic control center boundaries. Part of the demand for resources is made up of proposed departures, whose actual departure time is difficult to predict. For this reason, McTMA does not schedule the departures in advance, but rather relies on traffic managers to input their requested departure time. Because this happens only a short while before the aircraft's actual departure, McTMA is unable to accurately predict the amount of delay airborne aircraft will need to take in order to accommodate the departures. The proportion of demand which is made up by such proposed departures increases as the horizon over which metering occurs gets larger. This study provides an initial analysis of the severity of this problem in a 400-500 nautical mile metering horizon and discusses potential solutions to accommodate these departures. The challenge is to smoothly incorporate departures with the airborne stream while not excessively delaying the departures.' In particular, three solutions are reviewed: (1) scheduling the departures at their proposed departure time; (2) not scheduling the departures in advance; and (3) scheduling the departures at some time in the future based on an estimated error in their proposed time. The first solution is to have McTMA to automatically schedule the departures at their proposed departure times. Since the proposed departure times are indicated in their flight times in advance, this method is the simplest, but studies have shown that these proposed times are often incorrect2 The second option is the current practice, which avoids these inaccuracies by only scheduling aircraft when a confirmed prediction of departure time is obtained from the tower of the departure airport. Lastly, McTMA can schedule the departures at a predicted departure time based on statistical data of past departure time performance. It has been found that departures usually have a wheels-up time after their indicated proposed departure time, as shown in Figure 1. Hence, the departures were scheduled at a time in the future based on the mean error in proposed departure times for their airport

Subject assessment of in-vehicle auditory warnings for rail grade crossings

Human factors research has played an important role in reducing the incidents of vehicle-train collisions at rail grade crossings over the past 30 years. With the growing popularity of in-vehicle infotainment systems and GPS devices, new opportunities arise to cost-efficiently and effectively alert drivers of railroad crossings and to promote safer driving habits. To best utilize this in-vehicle technology, 32 auditory warnings (16 verbal, 7 train-related auditory icons, and 9 generic earcons) were generated and presented to 31 participants after a brief low-fidelity driving simulation. Participants rated each sound on eight dimensions deemed important in previous auditory warning literature. Preliminary results and possible interpretations are discussed

Interaction Model of Functions in the National Airspace System

The National Airspace System (NAS) is comprehensively described by five functions derived from big-picture goals: (1) conflict detection and resolution, (2) controlling aircraft states, (3) traffic flow management, (4) controlling passenger states, and (5) controlling company resources. It can be reasonably assumed that these functions interact in some way; this interaction is currently unknown. A model of the entire NAS would be helpful in discovering these interactions, yet no such comprehensive model exists. To address this problem an agent-based state-based model was created in MATLAB. To date, only functions (1) and (2) were implemented. Running the model shows that there are interactions between the two functions. However, the model suffers from high computational complexities. To address this second problem, simplifications were made to the model and in turn “runtime” was reduced. The next phase is to finish creating and implementing all five functions, after which, the effects of “uncertainties” on NAS interactions (performance) will be demonstrated. Uncertainties relate to an agent’s ability—human or automation—to detect various states and implement appropriate control actions. Knowledge on the effects of uncertainties will better help to drive decisions of all scales—tactical, minute-to minute decisions as well as long term investment decisions

A Process Framework for Managing Cybersecurity Risks in Projects

This paper builds on the need for earlier and earlier consideration of cybersecurity risks in the information systems life cycle by focusing on how cybersecurity threats apply to project execution, and whether the project manager should become more cyber-aware. Recent high-profile cases and decisions by the United States Department of Defense (US DoD) support early identification and analysis of cyber security risks. While the authors found no current academic research linking cybersecurity risks and project management, they did find a link between cybersecurity and information technology supply chain management. The paper makes the case for early cybersecurity risk management, and suggests that project managers broaden their awareness of cybersecurity risks. Future directions in the examination of early cybersecurity risks in projects are explored