Revisiting the Far Right Violent Extremist Threat: Violent Extremist Plot Success From 1948 Through 2017

Far Right violent extremists have successfully executed over 150 violent plots in the United States in just the past decade. This exploratory study analyzed Far Right violent extremist plot success with the plot success of Islamist violent extremists, Far Left violent extremists, and Single Issue violent extremists based on publicly available data from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) for the period of 1948 through 2017. By evaluating existing literature on Far Right violent extremism and analyzing the available PIRUS data, it was discovered that while Far Right violent extremists executed more successful violent plots than the other violent ideological extremist groups, Far Left violent extremists proportionally had more successful violent plots. A sample from the PIRUS database was explored, and the analysis demonstrates that the variables of Far Left radicalization, violence against persons and property, and plot preparation are significantly correlated with violent plot success

Reducing and removing barriers to spatial audio : applications of capital as a critical framework to promote inclusion in spatial audio : a thesis submitted to Massey University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Music at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

The research within this thesis aims to address the question of whether barriers of capital to the field of spatial audio can be reduced or removed. Spatial audio is the musical utilization of space, where spatialization is the salient feature of the musical work. As a field, it primarily exists within academic and art institutions. Because of this, there are numerous barriers that prohibit people from engaging with the field. These barriers include significant technical requirements, the need for education, the expense of large spatial audio systems, amongst others. These barriers mean that those who are excluded have little to no pathway to engage with the field. This thesis explores the barriers in spatial audio through the lens of capital. Viewed as one’s level of resource, a lack of economic, social, symbolic, cultural, and physical capital can exclude many from engaging with spatial audio. The research within this thesis identifies barriers of capital that exist within the field through qualitative and quantitative survey analysis as well as literature review. The identified barriers are then addressed through practice-led and practice-based research with the creation of new spatial audio works and compositional strategies, alongside user surveys to ascertain the efficacy of the research

Jet shapes with the broadening axis

Broadening is a classic jet observable that probes the transverse momentum structure of jets. Traditionally, broadening has been measured with respect to the thrust axis, which is aligned along the (hemisphere) jet momentum to minimize the vector sum of transverse momentum within a jet. In this paper, we advocate measuring broadening with respect to the “broadening axis”, which is the direction that minimizes the scalar sum of transverse momentum within a jet. This approach eliminates many of the calculational complexities arising from recoil of the leading parton, and observables like the jet angularities become recoil-free when measured using the broadening axis. We derive a simple factorization theorem for broadening-axis observables which smoothly interpolates between the thrust-like and broadening-like regimes. We argue that the same factorization theorem holds for two-point energy correlation functions as well as for jet shapes based on a “winner-take-all axis”. Using kinked broadening axes, we calculate event-wide angularities in e + e − collisions with next-to-leading logarithmic resummation. Defining jet regions using the broadening axis, we also calculate the global logarithms for angularities within a single jet. We find good agreement comparing our calculations both to showering Monte Carlo programs and to automated resummation tools. We give a brief historical perspective on the broadening axis and suggest ways that broadening-axis observables could be used in future jet substructure studies at the Large Hadron Collide

Biased Information Passing Between Subsystems Over Time in Complex System Design

The early stage design of large-scale engineering systems challenges design teams to balance a complex set of considerations. Established structured approaches for optimizing complex system designs offer strategies for achieving optimal solutions, but in practice sub-optimal system-level results are often reached due to factors such as satisficing, ill-defined problems or other project constraints. Twelve sub-system and system-level practitioners at a large aerospace organization were interviewed to understand the ways in which they integrate sub-systems. Responses showed sub-system team members often presented conservative, worst-case scenarios to other sub-systems when negotiating a trade-off as a way of hedging their own future needs. This practice of biased information passing, referred to informally by the practitioners as adding “margins,” is modeled with a series of optimization simulations. Three “bias” conditions were tested: no bias, a constant bias and a bias which decreases with time. Results from the simulations show that biased information passing negatively affects both the number of iterations needed to reach and the Pareto optimality of system-level solutions. Results are also compared to the interview responses and highlight several themes with respect to complex system design practice.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Progra

A Study of Student Design Team Behaviors in Complex System Design

Large-scale engineering systems require design teams to balance complex sets of considerations using a wide range of design and decision-making skills. Formal, computational approaches for optimizing complex systems offer strategies for arriving at optimal solutions in situations where system integration and design optimization are well-formulated. However, observation of design practice suggests engineers may be poorly prepared for this type of design. Four graduate student teams completed a distributed, complex system design task. Analysis of the teams' design histories suggests three categories of suboptimal approaches: global rather than local searches, optimizing individual design parameters separately, and sequential rather than concurrent optimization strategies. Teams focused strongly on individual subsystems rather than system-level optimization, and did not use the provided system gradient indicator to understand how changes in individual subsystems impacted the overall system. This suggests the need for curriculum to teach engineering students how to appropriately integrate systems as a whole.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CMMI-0830134)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award CMMI-0900255)Ford Foundation (Predoctoral Fellowship

Observations of designer behaviors in complex system design

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-51).The design of large-scale engineering systems requires design teams to balance a complex set of considerations. Formal approaches for optimizing complex system design assume that designers behave in a rational, consistent manner. However, observation of design practice suggests that there are limits to the rationality of designer behavior. This paper explores the gap between complex system designs generated via formal design process and those generated by teams of human designers. Results show that human design teams employed a range of strategies but arrived at suboptimal designs. Analysis of their design histories suggest three possible causes for the human design teams' performance: poorly executed global searches rather than well executed local searches, a focus on optimizing single design parameters, and sequential implementations rather than concurrent optimization strategies.by Jesse Austin-Breneman.S.M

Detection of an invasive aquatic species by canine olfaction

Invasive species represent a major concern for native flora and fauna in New Zealand waterways. Current surveying methods employed in the detection of these species typically rely on visually observing or catching fish and are often expensive and difficult to implement. Given that freshwater fish release organic materials into the water, and that some of these materials contain volatile elements that are then released into the air above the surface, it was hypothesised that domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) may be able to detect the presence of these species by smelling water samples that have contained them. In this study, four experiments were conducted to determine the validity of this hypothesis. Five pet dogs were trained using a go/no-go procedure to operate an automated apparatus that presented individual water samples through an opening in the front panel. Dogs were presented with samples from aquaria that had or had not contained fish. In Experiment 1, dogs were presented with water from aquaria containing koi carp (Cyprinus carpio) and aquaria containing no fish. In Experiment 2, koi carp samples were systematically diluted until concentrations similar to those found within the natural environment were reached. Experiment 3 sought to determine whether dogs could discriminate koi carp from a distantly-related fish (brown bullhead catfish, Ameiurus nebulosus). Experiment 4 replicated the previous experiment with a closely-related fish (goldfish, Carassius auratus). In all four experiments, dogs were able to correctly identify water that had contained koi carp and largely ignore water samples that had contained either no fish or other species of fish at above 80% accuracy. The overall results of this research indicate that dogs are able to accurately detect the presence of koi carp from water samples at concentrations similar to those found within the natural environment, and to discriminate between at least three species of fish. These findings suggest that dogs may have an important role to play in waterway conservation and management

Collaborative storytelling with an embodied conversational agent

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2003.Leaves not numbered.Includes bibliographical references (leaves [60]-[64]).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.When children tell stories to their peers, they naturally collaborate with each other: coauthoring stories, corroborating when in doubt, and acting as active listeners. Their reliance on each other during, as well as the creative process itself, benefits their literacy development. If an interactive system were to engage a child in collaborative narrative, it would be able to exert greater influence over the child's language processes, without becoming overly intrusive as to obstruct his/her natural behaviors. However, due to the spontaneous nature of improvisational play, the problem becomes a challenging one from both a technical, and a behavioral standpoint. This thesis studies children's collaborative behaviors during storytelling and presents a model of the participants' roles, and how to initiate and participate in collaboration with appropriate speech acts and turn-taking cues. Furthermore, it demonstrates how technologies such as speech recognition, natural language processing with commonsense reasoning, multimodal interfaces, and floor management are critical to realizing a real-time collaborative interaction between children and an embodied conversational agent.bu Austin J. Wang.M.Eng

Spatial-Temporal Imaging of Anisotropic Photocarrier Dynamics in Black Phosphorus

As an emerging single elemental layered material with a low symmetry in-plane crystal lattice, black phosphorus (BP) has attracted significant research interest owing to its unique electronic and optoelectronic properties, including its widely tunable bandgap, polarization dependent photoresponse and highly anisotropic in-plane charge transport. Despite extensive study of the steady-state charge transport in BP, there has not been direct characterization and visualization of the hot carriers dynamics in BP immediately after photoexcitation, which is crucial to understanding the performance of BP-based optoelectronic devices. Here we use the newly developed scanning ultrafast electron microscopy (SUEM) to directly visualize the motion of photo-excited hot carriers on the surface of BP in both space and time. We observe highly anisotropic in-plane diffusion of hot holes, with a 15-times higher diffusivity along the armchair (x-) direction than that along the zigzag (y-) direction. Our results provide direct evidence of anisotropic hot carrier transport in BP and demonstrate the capability of SUEM to resolve ultrafast hot carrier dynamics in layered two-dimensional materials.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure