Hostage and Barricade Incidents: A Profiling Perspective

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) has initiated a research project that profiles the perpetrators of hostage and barricade incidents. This research is conducted using a questionnaire that is completed at incident conclusion. The questionnaire was provide .. by the FBI as part of a project called HOB AS (Hostage, Barricade, and Suicide). The HOBAS information is distributed electronically and in print to member law enforcement agencies. HOBAS information is used in this project as the main source of secondary data. The University of Louisville School of Medicine supplied an additional source of secondary data. There are 24 questionnaires that make up the primary information. The HOBAS database covers 1,828 incidents, and 120 incidents are described in the information from Louisville. There is not enough primary data to constitute valid research from a statistical standpoint. However, for the purposes of future research, the three sources are listed and discussed in a preliminary manner. The premise that the perpetrators of these incidents and the incidents themselves have common factors is demonstrated. Unique aspects of the incidents that have occurred in Georgia are also discussed

Subcooled flow boiling of fluorocarbons

A study was conducted of heat transfer and hydrodynamic behavior for subcooled flow boiling of Freon-113, one of a group of fluorocarbons suitable for use in cooling of high-power-density electronic components. Problems arising from the excellent wetting characteristics and large solubility constants of fluorocarbons were also examined. The primary configuration was vertical upflow through a 0.500-in. ID stainless steel tube with direct resistance heating of the tube wall. Operating parameter ranges included up to 4.28 ft/sec velocity, 22.3 psia pressure, 61*F subcooling, 0.40 void fraction, 1.08 X 10-3 moles/mole dissolved gas, and 105 Btu/hr ft2 heat flux. Single-phase heat transfer was adequately correlated by standard methods. Boiling curves had a unique form dominated by large, discontinuous jumps in wall temperature at the incipient point on increasing heat flux traverses. Effects of velocity and subcooling on two-phase heat transfer followed conventional trends. Techniques were devised for accurate determination of the temperature dependence of the air-Freon-113 solubility constant and for measurement and control of dissolved gas content in the main loop. Dissolved gas effects were found to increase heat transfer significantly in the partial boiling mode. Data in the fully-developed boiling mode were successfully described by modifications of existing correlations. A conventional correlation provided, at best, an upper bound for the critical heat flux data. Models and analyses were formulated for predicting delayed nucleation and dissolved gas effects on incipience. Delayed nucleation and hysteresis were successfully eliminated by means of a special surface coating. Transition in gassy boiling heat transfer from gas-dominated to vapor-dominated modes was postulated with reference to adjusted saturation temperatures.(cont.) Single-phase pressure drop was adequately correlated by standard methods. Parametric effects on two-phase total pressure drop were investigated and described. Three novel techniques--photographic, trap, and capacitance-- were employed to obtain accurate void fraction measurements. It was found that dissolved gas drastically retarded bubble collapse rates. Parametric effects on void fraction were examined and approximately correlated on quality coordinates. Modification of an existing analysis for predicting the point of net vapor generation gave reasonable agreement with void data. Void information was used to estimate the gravity component of pressure drop. The remaining friction-acceleration component data were plotted on coordinates suggested in an existing correlation. Alteration of the coordinates to account for issolved gas resulted in fair agreement of data with the correlation curv-. A qualitative description of the gas-dominated to vapor-dominated transition in pressure drop performance, analogous to that for heat transfer, was developed.DSR Project

Using the Forest to See the Trees: Exploiting Context for Visual Object Detection and Localization

Recognizing objects in images is an active area of research in computer vision. In the last two decades, there has been much progress and there are already object recognition systems operating in commercial products. However, most of the algorithms for detecting objects perform an exhaustive search across all locations and scales in the image comparing local image regions with an object model. That approach ignores the semantic structure of scenes and tries to solve the recognition problem by brute force. In the real world, objects tend to covary with other objects, providing a rich collection of contextual associations. These contextual associations can be used to reduce the search space by looking only in places in which the object is expected to be; this also increases performance, by rejecting patterns that look like the target but appear in unlikely places. Most modeling attempts so far have defined the context of an object in terms of other previously recognized objects. The drawback of this approach is that inferring the context becomes as difficult as detecting each object. An alternative view of context relies on using the entire scene information holistically. This approach is algorithmically attractive since it dispenses with the need for a prior step of individual object recognition. In this paper, we use a probabilistic framework for encoding the relationships between context and object properties and we show how an integrated system provides improved performance. We view this as a significant step toward general purpose machine vision systems.United States. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NEGI-1582-04-0004)United States. Army Research Office. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (Grant Number N00014-06-1-0734)National Science Foundation (U.S.). (Contract IIS-0413232)National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowshi

CHANG-ES V: Nuclear Radio Outflow in a Virgo Cluster Spiral after a Tidal Disruption Event

We have observed the Virgo Cluster spiral galaxy, NGC~4845, at 1.6 and 6 GHz using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, as part of the `Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies -- an EVLA Survey' (CHANG-ES). The source consists of a bright unresolved core with a surrounding weak central disk (1.8 kpc diameter). The core is variable over the 6 month time scale of the CHANG-ES data and has increased by a factor of $\approx$ 6 since 1995. The wide bandwidths of CHANG-ES have allowed us to determine the spectral evolution of this core which peaks {\it between} 1.6 and 6 GHz (it is a GigaHertz-peaked spectrum source).We show that the spectral turnover is dominated by synchrotron self-absorption and that the spectral evolution can be explained by adiabatic expansion (outflow), likely in the form of a jet or cone. The CHANG-ES observations serendipitously overlap in time with the hard X-ray light curve obtained by Nikolajuk \& Walter (2013) which they interpret as due to a tidal disruption event (TDE) of a super-Jupiter mass object around a $10^5\, M_\odot$ black hole. We outline a standard jet model, provide an explanation for the observed circular polarization, and quantitatively suggest a link between the peak radio and peak X-ray emission via inverse Compton upscattering of the photons emitted by the relativistic electrons. We predict that it should be possible to resolve a young radio jet via VLBI as a result of this nearby TDE.Comment: 45 pages, 10 figures, accepted July 2, 2015 to the Astrophysical Journa

Assessing the repeatability of absolute CMRO 2 , OEF and haemodynamic measurements from calibrated fMRI

As energy metabolism in the brain is largely oxidative, the measurement of cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO2) is a desirable biomarker for quantifying brain activity and tissue viability. Currently, PET techniques based on oxygen isotopes are the gold standard for obtaining whole brain CMRO2 maps. Among MRI techniques that have been developed as an alternative are dual calibrated fMRI (dcFMRI) methods, which exploit simultaneous measurements of BOLD and ASL signals during a hypercapnic-hyperoxic experiment to modulate brain blood flow and oxygenation. In this study we quantified the repeatability of a dcFMRI approach developed in our lab, evaluating its limits and informing its application in studies aimed at characterising the metabolic state of human brain tissue over time. Our analysis focussed on the estimates of oxygen extraction fraction (OEF), cerebral blood flow (CBF), CBF-related cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) and CMRO2 based on a forward model that describes analytically the acquired dual echo GRE signal. Indices of within- and between-session repeatability are calculated from two different datasets both at a bulk grey matter and at a voxel-wise resolution and finally compared with similar indices obtained from previous MRI and PET measurements. Within- and between-session values of intra-subject coefficient of variation (CVintra) calculated from bulk grey matter estimates 6.7 ± 6.6% (mean ± std.) and 10.5 ± 9.7% for OEF, 6.9 ± 6% and 5.5 ± 4.7% for CBF, 12 ± 9.7% and 12.3 ± 10% for CMRO2. Coefficient of variation (CV) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) maps showed the spatial distribution of the repeatability metrics, informing on the feasibility limits of the method. In conclusion, results show an overall consistency of the estimated physiological parameters with literature reports and a satisfactory level of repeatability considering the higher spatial sensitivity compared to other MRI methods, with varied performance depending on the specific parameter under analysis, on the spatial resolution considered and on the study design

Elliptical-core two mode fiber sensors and devices incorporating photoinduced refractive index gratings

Results of experiments performed using germanium-doped, elliptical core, two-mode optical fibers whose sensitivity to strain was spatially varied through the use of chirped, refractive-index gratings permanently induced into the core using Argon-ion laser light are presented. This type of distributed sensor falls into the class of eighted-fiber sensors which, through a variety of means, weight the strain sensitivity of a fiber according to a specified spatial profile. We describe results of a weighted-fiber vibration mode filter which successfully enhances the particular vibration mode whose spatial profile corresponds to the profile of the grating chirp. We report on the high temperature survivability of such grating-based sensors and discuss the possibility of multiplexing more than one sensor within a single fiber

Pseudospectral contracted configuration interaction from a generalized valence bond reference

A multireference configuration interaction method is presented based upon pseudospectral integration and a novel generalized valence bond referenced contraction procedure. The combination of these approaches is shown to allow for unprecedented multiconfiguration self‐consistent‐field calculations on large molecules

Solutions for certain classes of Riccati differential equation

We derive some analytic closed-form solutions for a class of Riccati equation y'(x)-\lambda_0(x)y(x)\pm y^2(x)=\pm s_0(x), where \lambda_0(x), s_0(x) are C^{\infty}-functions. We show that if \delta_n=\lambda_n s_{n-1}-\lambda_{n-1}s_n=0, where \lambda_{n}= \lambda_{n-1}^\prime+s_{n-1}+\lambda_0\lambda_{n-1} and s_{n}=s_{n-1}^\prime+s_0\lambda_{k-1}, n=1,2,..., then The Riccati equation has a solution given by y(x)=\mp s_{n-1}(x)/\lambda_{n-1}(x). Extension to the generalized Riccati equation y'(x)+P(x)y(x)+Q(x)y^2(x)=R(x) is also investigated.Comment: 10 page