Federated AI for building AI Solutions across Multiple Agencies

The different sets of regulations existing for differ-ent agencies within the government make the task of creating AI enabled solutions in government dif-ficult. Regulatory restrictions inhibit sharing of da-ta across different agencies, which could be a significant impediment to training AI models. We discuss the challenges that exist in environments where data cannot be freely shared and assess tech-nologies which can be used to work around these challenges. We present results on building AI models using the concept of federated AI, which al-lows creation of models without moving the training data around.Comment: Presented at AAAI FSS-18: Artificial Intelligence in Government and Public Sector, Arlington, Virginia, US

The Atomic and Molecular Content of Disks Around Very Low-mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs

There is growing observational evidence that disk evolution is stellar-mass dependent. Here, we show that these dependencies extend to the atomic and molecular content of disk atmospheres. We analyze a unique dataset of high-resolution Spitzer/IRS spectra from 8 very low-mass star and brown dwarf disks. We report the first detections of Ne+, H2, CO2, and tentative detections of H2O toward these faint and low-mass disks. Two of our [NeII] 12.81 micron emission lines likely trace the hot (>5,000 K) disk surface irradiated by X-ray photons from the central stellar/sub-stellar object. The H2 S(2) and S(1) fluxes are consistent with arising below the fully or partially ionized surface traced by the [NeII] emission, in gas at about 600 K. We confirm the higher C2H2/HCN flux and column density ratio in brown dwarf disks previously noted from low-resolution IRS spectra. Our high-resolution spectra also show that the HCN/H2O fluxes of brown dwarf disks are on average higher than those of T Tauri disks. Our LTE modeling hints that this difference extends to column density ratios if H2O lines trace warm > 600 K disk gas. These trends suggest that the inner regions of brown dwarf disks have a lower O/C ratio than those of T Tauri disks which may result from a more efficient formation of non-migrating icy planetesimals. A O/C=1, as inferred from our analysis, would have profound implications on the bulk composition of rocky planets that can form around very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs.Comment: Accepted to Ap

A review of the standard of care owed to Australian firefighters from a safety perspective—The differences between academic theory and legal obligations

Working in high consequence yet low frequency, events Australian fire service Incident Controllers are required to make critical decisions with limited information in time-poor environments, whilst balancing competing priorities and pressures, to successfully solve dynamic large-scale disaster situations involving dozens of personnel within the Incident Management Team, including of front-line responders from multiple jurisdictions. They must also do this within the boundaries of public and political expectations, industrial agreements, and the legal requirement to maintain a safe workplace for all workers, inclusive of volunteers. In addition to these operational objectives, fire services must also provide realistic training to prepare frontline staff, whilst satisfying legislative requirements to provide a safe workplace under legislation that does not distinguish between emergency services and routine business contexts. In order to explore this challenge, in this article we review the different safety standards expected through industrial and legal lenses, and contextualize the results to the firefighting environment in Australia. Whilst an academic argument may be presented that firefighting is a reasonably unique workplace which exposes workers to a higher level of harm than many other workplaces, and that certain levels of firefighter injury and even fatality are acceptable, no exception or distinction is provided for the firefighting context within the relevant safety legislation. Until such time that fire services adopt the legal interpretations and applications and develop true safety management systems as opposed to relying on “dynamic risk assessment” as a defendable position, the ability of fire services and individual Incident Controllers to demonstrate they have managed risk as so far as reasonably practicable will remain ultimately problematic from a legal perspective

Degradation and breakdown characteristics of thin MgO dielectric layers

MgO has been suggested as a possible high-k dielectric for future complementary metal-oxide semiconductor processes. In this work, the time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) characteristics of 20 nm MgO films are discussed. Stress induced leakage current measurements indicate that the low measured Weibull slopes of the TDDB distributions for both n-type and p-type devices cannot be attributed to a lower trap generation rate than for SiO2. This suggests that much fewer defects are required to trigger breakdown in MgO under voltage stress than is the case for SiO2 or other metal-oxide dielectrics. This in turn explains the progressive nature of the breakdown in these films which is observed both in this work and elsewhere. The reason fewer defects are required is attributed to the morphology of the films