First International Polar Year, 1882-83

During 1882-83 eleven countries cooperated in a project to study the geophysics and geodesy of the polar regions by establishing 14 research stations. Three of these were located in Canada's Arctic: one each by the United States, Germany and Britain. They accumulated data on terrestial magnetism and boreal phenomena and brought back valuable information on arctic living

Kernel Ellipsoidal Trimming

Ellipsoid estimation is an issue of primary importance in many practical areas such as control, system identification, visual/audio tracking, experimental design, data mining, robust statistics and novelty/outlier detection. This paper presents a new method of kernel information matrix ellipsoid estimation (KIMEE) that finds an ellipsoid in a kernel defined feature space based on a centered information matrix. Although the method is very general and can be applied to many of the aforementioned problems, the main focus in this paper is the problem of novelty or outlier detection associated with fault detection. A simple iterative algorithm based on Titterington's minimum volume ellipsoid method is proposed for practical implementation. The KIMEE method demonstrates very good performance on a set of real-life and simulated datasets compared with support vector machine methods

Putting the wood back into our rivers: an experiment in river rehabilitation

This paper presents an overview of a project established to assess the effectiveness of woody debris (WD) reintroduction as a river rehabilitation tool. An outline of an experiment is presented that aims to develop and assess the effectiveness of engineered log jams (ELJs) under Australian conditions, and to demonstrate the potential for using a range of ELJs to stabilise a previously de-snagged, high energy gravel-bed channel. Furthermore, the experiment will test the effectiveness of a reach based rehabilitation strategy to increase geomorphic variability and hence habitat diversity. While primarily focusing on the geomorphic and engineering aspects of the rehabilitation strategy, fish and freshwater mussel populations are also being monitored. The project is located within an 1100m reach of the Williams River, NSW. Twenty separate ELJ structures were constructed, incorporating a total of 430 logs placed without any artificial anchoring (e.g., no cabling or imported ballast). A geomorphic control reach was established 3.1 km upstream of the project reach. In the 6 months since the structures were built the study site has experienced 6 flows that have overtopped most structures, 3 of the flows were in excess of the mean annual flood, inundating 19 of the ELJs by 2 - 3 m, and one by 0.5 m. Early results indicate that with the exception of LS4 and LS5, all structures are performing as intended and that the geomorphic variability of the reach has substantially increased

Cross cultural verbal cues to deception: truth and lies in first and second language forensic interview contexts

Introduction: The verbal deception literature is largely based upon North American and Western European monolingual English speaker interactions. This paper extends this literature by comparing the verbal behaviors of 88 south Asian bilinguals, conversing in either first (Hindi) or second (English) languages, and 48 British monolinguals conversing in English. Methods: All participated in a live event following which they were interviewed having been incentivized to be either deceptive or truthful. Event details, complications, verifiable sources, and plausibility ratings were analyzed as a function of veracity, language and culture. Results: Main effects revealed cross cultural similarities in both first and second language interviews whereby all liar’s verbal responses were impoverished and rated as less plausible than truthtellers. However, a series of cross-cultural interactions emerged whereby bi-lingual South Asian truthtellers and liars interviewed in first and second languages exhibited varying patterns of verbal behaviors, differences that have the potential to trigger erroneous assessments in practice. Discussion: Despite limitations, including concerns centered on the reductionary nature of deception research, our results highlight that while cultural context is important, impoverished, simple verbal accounts should trigger a ‘red flag’ for further attention irrespective of culture or interview language, since the cognitive load typically associated with formulating a deceptive account apparently emerges in a broadly similar manner

Banned Books Week: Big Ideas and Freedom of Information

Banned Books Week: Big Ideas and Freedom of Information Presented by Members of Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society Taylor Vredenburg, Isaiah Russell, Harrison Jenkins, and CJ Gibson October 4, 202

Interviewing in virtual environments: Towards understanding the impact of rapport-building behaviours and retrieval context on eyewitness memory.

Given the complexities of episodic memory and necessarily social nature of in-person face-to-face interviews, theoretical and evidence-based techniques for collecting episodic information from witnesses, victims, and survivors champion rapport-building. Rapport is believed to reduce some of the social demands of recalling an experienced event in an interview context, potentially increasing cognitive capacity for remembering. Cognitive and social benefits have also emerged in remote interview contexts with reduced anxiety and social pressure contributing to improved performance. Here, we investigated episodic memory in mock-eyewitness interviews conducted in virtual environments (VE) and in-person face-to-face (FtF), where rapport-building behaviours were either present or absent. Main effects revealed when rapport was present and where interviews were conducted in a VE participants recalled more correct event information, made fewer errors and were more accurate. Moreover, participants in the VE plus rapport-building present condition outperformed participants in all other conditions. Feedback indicated both rapport and environment were important for reducing the social demands of a recall interview, towards supporting effortful remembering. Our results add to the emerging literature on the utility of virtual environments as interview spaces and lend further support to the importance of prosocial behaviours in applied contexts. [Abstract copyright: © 2022. The Author(s).

One-ride human powered vehicle

This document discusses the design, analysis, manufacturing and testing of the One-Ride human powered vehicle which was entered into the 2015 ASME West Coast HPVC Competition. The goal of the vehicle is to entice people to switch from gas powered vehicles to the One-Ride for trips of up to 20 miles round trip. The One-Ride design features fully adjustable seating and steering positions and was designed to fit anyone between the heights of 5\u272 and 6\u274 comfortably. The seat is adjusted using metal sliders, manufactured in the SCU machine shop, which fit into brackets attached to the frame. The bike features telescopic steering which is adjusted by the loosening and tightening of collar clamps. To increase the strength and safety of the frame, the welding and heat treatment were contracted to industry professionals. The frame was welded by Chavez Welding and heat treated by Byington Steel Treating. Deformation in the seat frame during heat treatment prevented full adjustability of the seat, however was secured in its middle position for testing. The wheelbase of the bike is 73.33 in and has an overall height of 50.77 in. . Slop in the steering caused instability at low speeds, which prevented the bike from being ridden in the ASME HPVC Competition. Design solutions to both of these problems have been identified. At the completion of senior design, the manufacturing is still ongoing

Shift in lateralization during illusory self‐motion: EEG responses to visual flicker at 10 Hz and frequency‐specific modulation by tACS

Self‐motion perception is a key aspect of higher vestibular processing, suggested to rely upon hemispheric lateralization and alpha‐band oscillations. The first aim of this study was to test for any lateralization in the EEG alpha band during the illusory sense of self‐movement (vection) induced by large optic flow stimuli. Visual stimuli flickered at alpha frequency (approx. 10 Hz) in order to produce steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP s), a robust EEG measure which allows probing the frequency‐specific response of the cortex. The first main result was that differential lateralization of the alpha SSVEP response was found during vection compared with a matched random motion control condition, supporting the idea of lateralization of visual–vestibular function. Additionally, this effect was frequency‐specific, not evident with lower frequency SSVEP s. The second aim of this study was to test for a causal role of the right hemisphere in producing this lateralization effect and to explore the possibility of selectively modulating the SSVEP response. Transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS ) was applied over the right hemisphere simultaneously with SSVEP recording, using a novel artefact removal strategy for combined tACS ‐EEG . The second main result was that tACS enhanced SSVEP amplitudes, and the effect of tACS was not confined to the right hemisphere. Subsequent control experiments showed the effect of tACS requires the flicker frequency and tACS frequency to be closely matched and tACS to be of sufficient intensity. Combined tACS ‐SSVEP s are a promising method for future investigation into the role of neural oscillations and for optimizing tACS