Visualizing Social Networks to Inform Tactical Engagement Strategies that will Influence the Human Domain

The Special Operations Command, Marine Corps, and Army recently formed the Strategic Landpower Task Force to study the confluence of the land, cyber, and human domains. To support the Task Force’s research, this paper demonstrates the utility of visualizing social networks in order to inform a unit’s population tactical engagement strategy. We illustrate how collecting, structuring and visualizing socio-cultural data can assist units to rapidly communicate human dynamics, visualize community and group affiliations, prepare for key leader engagements, highlight potential powerbrokers, and identify information gaps about the human terrain. We provide real world examples from a recent deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan. These examples reveal how social network and link analysis can assist units to understand and influence the human domain at the tactical level

Effects of genetic testing on insurance : pedigree analysis and ascertainment adjustment

Gas condensate flow, which is very different from the conventional two-phase (oil and gas) flow, shows more complicated behaviour around the wellbore owing to condensate buildup and the different velocity effects on relative permeability (kr) of these low IFT fluid systems. This is especially true for complex wellbore completions, such as hydraulically fractured or perforated wells. This research programme has two separate parts. The first part is about gas condensate flow around hydraulically fractured wells (HFWs). In this part of the study, different inhouse simulators have been developed by the author. These simulators account for the changes in fluid properties with pressure, phase change, coupling (increase in kr as IFT decreases or velocity increases) and inertia (decrease in kr when velocity increases) when it is required to do so. The simulators have been used to investigate the effect of different important geometrical and flow parameters on the performance of a HFW. The new developed formulae for accurate estimation of effective fracture conductivity, fracture skin factors (mechanical and flow) and effective wellbore radius are the main practical outcomes of this part of the study. The author has also provided a new convenient method for the optimization of fracture dimensions for a given fracture volume, in gas condensate reservoirs. The second part of this research is about the study of gas condensate flow around perforated wells. Here the previously developed simulators by the Gas Condensate Research group have been used to develop a new method for estimation of mechanical perforation skin. The introduction of a method for calculation of effective wellbore radius of a perforated well by which the flow skin is negligible is another important result of this part. The new formulae introduced in this work can be used as a useful tool for estimation of well productivity/injectivity. They are also very useful in reservoir simulation, because having the effective wellbore radius for a complex wellbore geometry- such as a perforated well or hydraulically fractured well - provides an opportunity to define a simple open-hole system instead of the real wellbore. This eliminates the need for a costly and cumbersome fine grid exercise, which otherwise would be required to capture accurately the variation of flow parameters around these types of wellbores.Wellcome Trus

Second-order nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes for exploring stochastic simulations

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jos.2016.8This paper presents new Latin hypercube designs with minimal correlations between all main, quadratic, and two-way interaction effects for a full second-order model. These new designs facilitate exploratory analysis of stochastic simulation models in which there is considerable a priori uncertainty about the forms of the responses. We focus on understanding the underlying complexities of simulated systems by exploring the input variables’effects on the behavior of simulation responses. These new designs allow us to determine the driving factors, detect interactions between input variables, identify points of diminishing or increasing rates of return, and find thresholds or change points in localized areas. Our proposed designs enable analysts to fit many diverse metamodels to multiple outputs with a single set of runs. Creating these designs is computationally intensive; therefore, several have been cataloged and made available online to experimenters.Office of Naval Research (N0001412WX20823

Premeditation and Deliberation

Premeditation and Deliberatio

Development of Fluid-Curtain Sealing Technology to Improve the Efficiency and Operational Flexibility of Large Power Generation Turbines

Fluidic curtain sealing has recently been shown to offer significantly reduced leakage in rotating turbomachinery seals. The seal type uses an additional flow injected into the leakage path to reduce some existing leakage flow. Shrouded steam turbine tip seals were the focus of research in this thesis, but the seal has potential applications in blade tip seals, stator root seals, shaft seals, and end gland seals in steam turbines as well as in gas turbines. The implementation of such a seal may be simplified in the case of gas turbines since secondary flows of air are already built into the machine to provide cooling flows to high temperature components. The fluidic curtain seal is especially effective when a combination of fluidic curtain and a conventional labyrinth seal is used, and the research presented will generally feature a fluidic curtain placed upstream of a labyrinth fin type restriction. The new addition to knowledge on fluidic curtain sealing described in this work is in characterising seal performance in terms of its design parameters. Better characterisation of the seal allows the development of a set of realistic design rules to specify how fluidic curtains may be applied to the design of new, high performance turbomachinery seals. Two main advances in characterising fluidic curtain seals resulted from the research. The first advance was to numerically and experimentally test basic geometric parameters and their influence on performance to identify design rules which maximize the performance gain of incorporating a fluidic curtain. A series of fundamental dimensionless geometric ratios were proposed and the design space created by these parameters was explored and validated experimentally using a simple annular test rig. CFD was then used to demonstrate that it is possible to incorporate a high performance design into a labyrinth seal independent of the existing labyrinth seal geometry. The second advance is to explore the effect of swirl velocity at the leakage channel inlet on overall seal performance. This was first achieved using CFD to model the selected realistic tip seal design with different levels of inlet swirl. This CFD study was then validated by building the design in a rotating annular test rig where the inlet swirl velocity was controlled. The research findings resulted in a proposed design process for new fluidic curtain seals (Section 8.2) which considers; the geometry of an existing seal, fluid conditions in the leakage path and elsewhere in the turbine stage, rotational speed, and minimum allowable physical clearances

The Rorschach Test and Its Clinical Application: With Special Reference to Problem Children and Epileptics

When, in 1921, Hermann Rorschach published, in the second, volume of "Arbeiten zur angewandten Psychiatrie" (Bircher, Berne), under the title of "Psychodiagnostik", the methods and. results of a diagnostical apperception experiment, consisting in the interpretation of casually created forms, it seemed that the ideal test, from the point of view of the clinical psychiatrist, had been devised. For Rorschach claimed., firstly, that his test was an accurate gauge of intelligence; that, secondly, it evaluated, the emotional life of the patient, giving an index to his affective lability and his tendencies to extratension or introversion; and, thirdly, that it threw lighit on the unconscious mechanisms in personality. Further, he announced that individuals could he classified into the various reaction types. He claimed that different reaction patterns were obtained for the different types of normals; for the affective disorders; for the different classes of schizophrenics; for the organic mental disorders; for mental deficiency and epilepsy. In short, he maintained that the test was a diagnostic instrument of surprising delicacy. Over the great majority of other psychological tests also, the Rorschach test maintains certain distinct advantages. Education plays but a small role, and only the highly intelligent normals form a contrast; while the same material is used for all grades of intelligence by which means the results are therefore comparable. The material is sufficiently unlike an intelligence test to free the subject from emotional inhibition, incident to the test situation itself, and so gives the clinician a more accurate picture of the equipment available for intellectual functioning in life generally. These are almost grandiose claims to make for one test, and it is the purpose of this paper to report on its application to the clinical field, and to estimate the truth of Rorschach's assertions. Further, it will be considered whether this test, in its present form, can become an instrument to be used, in the everyday practice of clinical psychiatry, as the Binet Test, or modifications of it, is used in psychometry. A brief outline of the history and technique of the test will also be given, but no attempt will be made, in so short a paper, to describe either fully; nor will the writer deal extensively with Rorschach's theoretical psychology. Sufficient data will merely be given to make understandable the nature of the test and its application

An inexpensive particle monitor for smoker behaviour modification in homes

Peer reviewedPostprin

Bridging Systems Engineering Theory and Application in Undergraduate Curricula

Systems engineering undergraduate curricula are typically divided into foundational, methodology, and application courses. The United States Military Academy, Systems Engineering program primary application course, often referred to as a Capstone project, involves teams of students performing client-based work to solve complex real-world problems. Existing foundational and methodology courses tend to emphasize engineering management processes and operations research techniques at the expense of systems engineering technical processes. As such, students often do not have the requisite knowledge base necessary for their Capstone, reducing their self-efficiency, decision-making, overall project interest, and quality of technical artifacts. In an attempt to bridge this gap, the United States Military Academy, Systems Engineering program introduced a cornerstone course to teach system engineering design and system engineering technical processes as practiced in industry and documented in the INCOSE handbook. The course structure follows the system engineering V methodology and uses a realistic, but constrained, design project to teach and apply systems engineering skills. The introduction of this new course was found to increase the overall knowledge-base of the students entering their Capstone project, allowing them to be more self-efficient and capable of making informed engineering design decisions

Development of a biomarker for penconazole: a human oral dosing study and a survey of UK residents’ exposure

Penconazole is a widely used fungicide in the UK; however, to date, there have been no peer-reviewed publications reporting human metabolism, excretion or biological monitoring data. The objectives of this study were to i) develop a robust analytical method, ii) determine biomarker levels in volunteers exposed to penconazole, and, finally, to iii) measure the metabolites in samples collected as part of a large investigation of rural residents’ exposure. An LC-MS/MS method was developed for penconazole and two oxidative metabolites. Three volunteers received a single oral dose of 0.03 mg/kg body weight and timed urine samples were collected and analysed. The volunteer study demonstrated that both penconazole-OH and penconazole-COOH are excreted in humans following an oral dose and are viable biomarkers. Excretion is rapid with a half-life of less than four hours. Mean recovery of the administered dose was 47% (range 33%–54%) in urine treated with glucuronidase to hydrolyse any conjugates. The results from the residents’ study showed that levels of penconazole-COOH in this population were low with >80% below the limit of detection. Future sampling strategies that include both end of exposure and next day urine samples, as well as contextual data about the route and time of exposure, are recommended