Nation-Building Modeling and Resource Allocation Via Dynamic Programming

Dynamic programming is used in many military and industrial applications to solve sequential decision making problems. This research proposes the development of a model and approach to address the application of dynamic programming in nation-building modeling. Through the creation of component indices to capture the state of operational variables: Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information (PMESII), a functional form of a system of differential equations is developed to account for the interactions between the state indices and instruments of national power: Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic (DIME). Solving this problem with dynamic programming provides an improved sequence which describes the application of DIME in a manner that minimizes an objective (i.e. cost, time) and allows the model to account for external factors such as an insurgent reaction to US policy. An application of the model is derived for Iraq to demonstrate the utility of the model and explore various aspects of the solution space. This modeling approach offers a potential significant capability when analyzing and planning for nation-building operations

Understanding the Instruments of National Power through a System of Differential Equations in a Counterinsurgency

Models that account for the progression of nation-building and the impacts of the instruments of national power -- Diplomacy, Informational, Military, and Economic effects -- are rare. This research proposes the development of such a model. Through the derivation of state indices for the operational variables of Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information, a functional form of a system of differential equations is developed to account for the interactions between the state indices and instruments of national power. This methodology is a mean-field inverse problem which solves for the coefficients of the differential equations in a data-driven manner. Publicly available data are used to develop the indices and describe the instruments of national power. Applying mean-field theory allows the differential equations to be solved through a nonlinear program that derives minimum error-producing coefficients. An application of the model is derived for Operation Iraqi Freedom to demonstrate the utility as well as the effects of various alternate strategies, using the dynamics captured in the model. This modeling approach offers a potentially significant capability for analyzing and planning future Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction Operations (STTRO)

Oxygen delivery system in pre-hospital emergency care in india GVK EMRI 108: a review article

The goal of an effective emergency medical system should be to provide universal emergency care along with assured quality. Oxygen is often used drug in the pre hospital. Oxygen delivery can be monitored by pulse oximetry, typically with a goal of reversing hypoxemia. This paper describes the importance of oxygen in emergency care and its contribution to reducing avoidable death and disability. It also highlights the oxygen delivery systems and training processes /protocols in ambulance based pre-hospital care. In addition, it also shares the usage rates of oxygen and delivery methods in thermal and electrical burns in 108 GVK EMRI, India ambulances. A descriptive study methodology was adopted for explaining the training and pre-hospital care processes of oxygen delivery. Retrospective study method was adopted to measure the oxygen utilization rates in management of burns cases in 108 ambulances in the year 2015. EMTs consistently assessed vitals and provided oxygen to patients’. When EMTs found that patients’ had oxygen saturation less than 95%, they provided supplemental oxygen 95% of the times. EMTs though adhering to the routine use of oxygen in 9 out of 10 cases “where indicated, refresher training should focus on use of oxygen in special circumstances and the benefit to be closely monitored for favourable clinical outcomes”. There is a need to study such common and important essential pre-hospital interventions in all types of emergencies being served

Cyber Anomaly Detection: Using Tabulated Vectors and Embedded Analytics for Efficient Data Mining

Firewalls, especially at large organizations, process high velocity internet traffic and flag suspicious events and activities. Flagged events can be benign, such as misconfigured routers, or malignant, such as a hacker trying to gain access to a specific computer. Confounding this is that flagged events are not always obvious in their danger and the high velocity nature of the problem. Current work in firewall log analysis is manual intensive and involves manpower hours to find events to investigate. This is predominantly achieved by manually sorting firewall and intrusion detection/prevention system log data. This work aims to improve the ability of analysts to find events for cyber forensics analysis. A tabulated vector approach is proposed to create meaningful state vectors from time-oriented blocks. Multivariate and graphical analysis is then used to analyze state vectors in human–machine collaborative interface. Statistical tools, such as the Mahalanobis distance, factor analysis, and histogram matrices, are employed for outlier detection. This research also introduces the breakdown distance heuristic as a decomposition of the Mahalanobis distance, by indicating which variables contributed most to its value. This work further explores the application of the tabulated vector approach methodology on collected firewall logs. Lastly, the analytic methodologies employed are integrated into embedded analytic tools so that cyber analysts on the front-line can efficiently deploy the anomaly detection capabilities

anomalyDetection: Implementation of Augmented Network Log Anomaly Detection Procedures

As the number of cyber-attacks continues to grow on a daily basis, so does the delay in threat detection. For instance, in 2015, the Office of Personnel Management discovered that approximately 21.5 million individual records of Federal employees and contractors had been stolen. On average, the time between an attack and its discovery is more than 200 days. In the case of the OPM breach, the attack had been going on for almost a year. Currently, cyber analysts inspect numerous potential incidents on a daily basis, but have neither the time nor the resources available to perform such a task. anomalyDetection aims to curtail the time frame in which anomalous cyber activities go unnoticed and to aid in the efficient discovery of these anomalous transactions among the millions of daily logged events by i) providing an efficient means for pre-processing and aggregating cyber data for analysis by employing a tabular vector transformation and handling multicollinearity concerns; ii) offering numerous built-in multivariate statistical functions such as Mahalanobis distance, factor analysis, principal components analysis to identify anomalous activity, iii) incorporating the pipe operator (%\u3e%) to allow it to work well in the tidyverse workflow. Combined, anomalyDetection offers cyber analysts an efficient and simplified approach to break up network events into time-segment blocks and identify periods associated with suspected anomalies for further evaluation

Investigating the Energy Dissipation Capability of Solid Piles Breakwater

In terms of the importance of coastal zones, this research started with the motivation of proposing an innovative coastal protection measure (solid piles, evenly distributed and staggered, breakwaters) and investigating their capability of energy dissipation, experimentally. Physical models of solid piles breakwater were designed and constructed. Experimental flume was arranged to test these models and measuring devices were arranged. Contributing parameters (i.e. wave height, period, steepness, piles arrangements and diameters) were varied, Based on the discussions and within the experimented range of parameters, it was clear that solid piles possess an enormous capability of dissipating the wave energy by a percentage that ranged between 20 to 75% which is considered to be significant amount from the coastal engineering point of view

Thermoelastohydrodynamic analysis of large thrust pad bearings

Imperial Users onl

Simple technique for texture function analysis in granular thin film media

In this work a simple technique to extract the texture function in granular thin film media is implemented. The technique is based on previous work in which the distribution function of particles easy axes f(α) is calculated from the measured parallel remanence curve (Mrp(β)). In this simple technique we consider that the measured Mrp(β) curve can be fitted to a series of cos(2β), i.e. Mrp(β)=B0+B2 cos(2β)+B4 cos(4β) where the angle β is the angle by which the film is rotated. This approximation is found to be valid when the texture function has a standard deviation >20°. On this basis, the constants B0, B2 and B4 can be determined by using only three data points for the parallel remanence, Mrp(0), Mrp(45°) and Mrp(90°). The new technique is applied to a textured thin film consisting of cobalt ferrite particles 17 nm in diameter and to a commercial Sony video tape. Using this simple technique, the obtained texture functions are found to be similar to those obtained from the full Mrp(β) curves. This new technique will furnish a simple method with which the texture function in 2D systems can be obtained.Peer reviewe

Discrepancy of room temperature ferromagnetism in Mo-doped In 2 O 3

International audienc