Spending to save: Is conflict prevention cost-effective.

YesThe objective of this study is to provide an evidence base concerning the costs and benefits of conflict prevention (CP) activities (defined as those activities undertaken primarily to reduce the risk of conflict), compared with those of engaging after large-scale conflict has begun

Spending to save: Prospective case studies.

This case study considers the relative costs of conflict prevention and post-crisis intervention for Sudan during the period 2004-2018

Spending to save: Retrospective Case Studies.

yesThe key questions to be addressed in this study are: ¿ with the benefit of hindsight, what conflict prevention `packages¿ could the international community have designed in order to minimise the probability of the conflicts that actually took place? ¿ how much would have been saved if these packages had been implemented, given reasonable estimates about their costs, compared with the actual cost of conflict and post-conflict intervention. The first section provides a background to the conflicts. This is followed by an assessment of the levels of resources that the international community has committed to the Western Balkans since 1991. The third part of the study provides two hypothetical scenarios for CP interventions that might have restrained conflict from breaking out. These CP packages are then costed and an assessment of their probability of success is made

A computer program for systematically analyzing free-flight data to determine the aerodynamics of axisymmetric bodies

Computer program for analyzing free flight motions of axisymmetric bodies to determine aerodynamic coefficient

Maternal inbreeding reduces parental care in the zebra finch, <i>Taeniopygia guttata</i>

Increased embryo mortality is the most commonly cited cause of reduced fitness in inbred organisms. Reduced embryo survival may be the result of reduced parental expenditure by inbred individuals and here we tested the hypothesis that inbreeding results in impaired incubation behaviour in captive zebra finches. We compared incubation attentiveness of inbred female zebra finches (derived from full-sibling mating) with that of control females (derived from unrelated parents) and found a statistically significant inbreeding depression of 17% in incubation attentiveness. This shows that inbreeding can significantly influence parental behaviour. Despite a reduction in the amount of time inbred females spent incubating, their partners were able to compensate for the reduced incubation attentiveness. Incubation temperature also did not differ between inbred and control females. To test for the effect of incubation behaviour, we fostered eggs laid by control females to either inbred or control females at the end of laying. Eggs that were incubated by inbred females had an 8.5% lower hatching success than eggs incubated by control females and, although based on a relatively small sample and not statistically significant, the magnitude of the difference was consistent with differences in hatching success observed in the wild under relatively benign environmental conditions. Thus, under more challenging environmental conditions usually encountered in the wild, the reduced incubation attentiveness of inbred females could provide one proximate explanation for the consistent finding of decreased hatching success with increasing maternal inbreeding in birds

Kernel-based high-dimensional histogram estimation for visual tracking

©2008 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or distribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.Presented at the 15th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, October 12–15, 2008, San Diego, California, U.S.A.DOI: 10.1109/ICIP.2008.4711862We propose an approach for non-rigid tracking that represents objects by their set of distribution parameters. Compared to joint histogram representations, a set of parameters such as mixed moments provides a significantly reduced size representation. The discriminating power is comparable to that of the corresponding full high dimensional histogram yet at far less spatial and computational complexity. The proposed method is robust in the presence of noise and illumination changes, and provides a natural extension to the use of mixture models. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms both full color mean-shift and global covariance searches

Experimental unsteady aerodynamics of conventional and supercritical airfoils

Experimental data on the unsteady aerodynamics of oscillating airfoils in transonic flow are presented. Two 0.5 m-chord airfoil models - an NACA 64A010 and an NLR 7301 - were tested in the NASA-Ames 11 by 11 foot Transonic Wind Tunnel at Mach numbers to 0.85, at chord Reynolds numbers to 12 million and at mean angles of attack to 4 deg. The airfoils were subjected to both pitching and plunging motions at reduced frequencies to 0.3 (physical frequencies to 53 Hz). The new hardware and the extensive use of computer-experiment integration developed for this test are described. The geometrical configuration of the model and the test arrangement are described in detail. Mean and first harmonic data are presented in both tabular and graphical form to aid in comparisons with other data and with numerical computations

Recent developments in rotary-balance testing of fighter aircraft configurations at NASA Ames Research Center

Two rotary balance apparatuses were developed for testing airplane models in a coning motion. A large scale apparatus, developed for use in the 12-Foot Pressure Wind tunnel primarily to permit testing at high Reynolds numbers, was recently used to investigate the aerodynamics of 0.05-scale model of the F-15 fighter aircraft. Effects of Reynolds number, spin rate parameter, model attitude, presence of a nose boom, and model/sting mounting angle were investigated. A smaller apparatus, which investigates the aerodynamics of bodies of revolution in a coning motion, was used in the 6-by-6 foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel to investigate the aerodynamic behavior of a simple representation of a modern fighter, the Standard Dynamic Model (SDM). Effects of spin rate parameter and model attitude were investigated. A description of the two rigs and a discussion of some of the results obtained in the respective test are presented