Police governance in Canada : a parallax perspective

Tensions between public expectations for police governance and ethical governance mirror recent spectacular governance failures. Several recent Canadian commissions of inquiry and court cases critical of the police have suggested police governance need to be more direct and assertive. The small numbers of academic studies that focused on the unique field of policing have largely ignored the behaviour of police boards responsible for their governance. More importantly is the apparent lack of attention paid by those responsible for police governance to the criticality of the pluralistic nature of policing itself. This research focuses on police boards in particular and not the police, with particular attention given to the link between their ethical decision-making and public trust. National leads in police governance, representing regional and national boards and board associations from across the country, were interviewed for this research. Eight key aspects of police governance were analyzed, and a number of gaps between current and best practices were identified. Ultimately, a number of recommendations are made to close those gaps, including the contribution of a new universal assessment instrument for police governance: the parallax perspective tool

EOM sideband phase characteristics for the spaceborne gravitational wave detector LISA

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a joint ESA/NASA mission proposed to observe gravitational waves. One important noise source in the LISA phase measurement will be on-board reference oscillators. An inter-spacecraft clock tone transfer chain will be necessary to remove this non-negligible phase noise in post processing. One of the primary components of this chain are electro-optic modulators (EOMs). At modulation frequencies of 2 GHz, we characterise the excess phase noise of a fibre-coupled integrated EOM in the LISA measurement band (0.1 mHz to 1 Hz). The upper phase noise limit was found to be almost an order of magnitude better than required by the LISA mission. In addition, the EOM's phase dependence on temperature and optical power was determined. The measured coefficients are within a few milliradians per kelvin and per watt respectively and thereby negligible with the expected on-board temperature and laser power stability.DLR/50 OQ 0601DFG/EXC/QUES

A Survey on the Interplay between Software Engineering and Systems Engineering during SoS Architecting

Background: The Systems Engineering and Software Engineering disciplines are highly intertwined in most modern Systems of Systems (SoS), and particularly so in industries such as defense, transportation, energy and health care. However, the combination of these disciplines during the architecting of SoS seems to be especially challenging; the literature suggests that major integration and operational issues are often linked to ambiguities and gaps between system-level and software-level architectures. Aims: The objective of this paper is to empirically investigate: 1) the state of practice on the interplay between these two disciplines in the architecting process of systems with SoS characteristics; 2) the problems perceived due to this interplay during said architecting process; and 3) the problems arising due to the particular characteristics of SoS systems. Method: We conducted a questionnaire-based online survey among practitioners from industries in the aforementioned domains, having a background on Systems Engineering, Software Engineering or both, and experience in the architecting of systems with SoS characteristics. The survey combined multiple-choice and open-ended questions, and the data collected from the 60 respondents were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative methods. Results: We found that although in most cases the software architecting process is governed by system-level requirements, the way requirements were specified by systems engineers, and the lack of domain-knowledge of software engineers, often lead to misinterpretations at software level. Furthermore, we found that unclear and/or incomplete specifications could be a common cause of technical debt in SoS projects, which is caused, in part, by insufficient interface definitions. It also appears that while the SoS concept has been adopted by some practitioners in the field, the same is not true about the existing and growing body of knowledge on the subject in Software Engineering resulting in recurring problems with system integration. Finally, while not directly related to the interplay of the two disciplines, the survey also indicates that low-level hardware components, despite being identified as the root cause of undesired emergent behavior, are often not considered when modeling or simulating the system. Conclusions: The survey indicates the need for tighter collaboration between the two disciplines, structured around concrete guidelines and practices for reconciling their differences. A number of open issues identified by this study require further investigation

Fiber modulators and fiber amplifiers for LISA

We present the sideband phase characteristics of a fiber-coupled integrated electro-optical modulator (EOM) at a modulation frequency of 2 GHz for Fourier frequencies from 0.1 mHz to 1 Hz. The upper phase noise limit was almost an order of magnitude better than required for LISA. The EOM's phase dependencies on temperature and transmitted optical power were measured and found to be uncritical. Additionally we have investigated three optical amplifiers emitting 1 W. Their differential phase noise and optical pathlength noise as one contribution to differential phase noise were measured. The measured differential phase noise was within the requirement. The dependencies of differential phase noise on pump power were measured and requirements for the operation of the amplifier on the LISA satellite derived.DLR/50 OQ 0601DFG/EXC/QUES

Choosing Code Segments to Exclude from Code Similarity Detection

When student programs are compared for similarity as a step in the detection of academic misconduct, certain segments of code are always sure to be similar but are no cause for suspicion. Some of these segments are boilerplate code (e.g. public static void main String [] args) and some will be code that was provided to students as part of the assessment specification. This working group explores these and other types of code that are legitimately common in student assessments and can therefore be excluded from similarity checking. From their own institutions, working group members collected assessment submissions that together encompass a wide variety of assessment tasks in a wide variety of programming languages. The submissions were analysed to determine what sorts of code segment arose frequently in each assessment task. The group has found that common code can arise in programming assessment tasks when it is required for compilation purposes; when it reflects an intuitive way to undertake part or all of the task in question; when it can be legitimately copied from external sources; and when it has been suggested by people with whom many of the students have been in contact. A further finding is that the nature and size of the common code fragments vary with course level and with task complexity. An informal survey of programming educators confirms the group's findings and gives some reasons why various educators include code when setting programming assignments.Peer reviewe

The demographic structure of the Metropolitan Zone of the Mexico Valley: 2000-2010

He identified the existence of five metropolitan áreas in Mexico in 1940, extended to twelve in 1960 (Unikel, 1978).In 1978 Luis Unikel introduced the idea of the metropolitan área. This was conceived as a political-administrative unit

Investigation of guided wave propagation in pipes fully- and partially-embedded in concrete

The application of long-range guided-wave testing to pipes embedded in concrete results in unpredictable test-ranges. The influence of the circumferential extent of the embedding-concrete around a steel pipe on the guided wave propagation is investigated. An analytical model is used to study the axisymmetric fully embedded pipe case, while explicit finite-element and semi-analytical finite-element simulations are utilised to investigate a partially embedded pipe. Model predictions and simulations are compared with full-scale guided-wave tests. The transmission-loss of the T(0,1)-mode in an 8 in. steel pipe fully embedded over an axial length of 0.4 m is found to be in the range of 32–36 dB while it reduces by a factor of 5 when only 50% of the circumference is embedded. The transmission-loss in a fully embedded pipe is mainly due to attenuation in the embedded section while in a partially embedded pipe it depend strongly on the extent of mode-conversion at entry to the embedded-section; low loss modes with energy concentrated in the region of the circumference not-covered with concrete have been identified. The results show that in a fully embedded pipe, inspection beyond a short distance will not be possible, whereas when the concrete is debonded over a fraction of the pipe circumference, inspection of substantially longer lengths may be possible