Ensuring effective information flow through the JTB Enterprise in support of combat operations

The goal for this research is to develop recommendations to improve the Joint Improvised Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) Test Board (JTB) enterprise test process through enhanced information sharing. Due to the complexity of the environment, structure of the organization, socio-cultural factors, and lack of incentive to share knowledge among test conductors, the JTB is currently not accomplishing its mission as efficiently as possible. We report on the results of a knowledge engineering effort that was conducted on the critical tasks performed by users and the associated critical information that will contribute to increasing the efficiency of information flow between personnel in the JTB, working groups, test ranges, research facilities, and JIEDDO itself. The focus for this effort was on the following questions: What types of information are they seeking when using the JTB portal?; What types of questions are they trying to answer during their daily tasks, and how is this information obatined?; What types of products are produced?; and What procedural improvements can be implemented to ehance knowledge sharing? Improvements are needed to facilitate sharing results resported in capabilities and limitations documents in terms of how well the testing process supports the operational environment

Principles For Aiding Complex Military Decision Making

Paper presented to the Second International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Monterey, Ca.The Tactical Decision Making Under Stress (TADMUS) program is being conducted to apply recent developments in decision theory and human-system interaction technology to the design of a decision support system for enhancing tactical decision making under the highly complex conditions involved in anti-air warfare scenarios in littoral environments. Our goal is to present decision support information in a format that minimizes any mismatches between the cognitive characteristics of the human decision maker and the design and response characteristics of the decision support system. Decision makers are presented with decision support tools which parallel the cognitive strategies they already employ, thus reducing the number of decision making errors. Hence, prototype display development has been based on decision making models postulated by naturalistic decision-making theory. Incorporating current human-system interaction design principles is expected to reduce cognitive processing demands and thereby mitigate decision errors caused by cognitive overload, which have been documented through research and experimentation. Topics include a discussion of: (1) the theoretical background for the TADMUS program; (2) a description of the cognitive tasks performed; (3) the decision support and human- system interaction design principles incorporated to reduce the cognitive processing load on the decision maker; and (4) a brief description of the types of errors made by decision makers and interpretations of the cause of these errors based on the cognitive psychology literature.Funding for the research cited in this paper was received from the Cognitive and Neural Science and Technology Division of the Office of Naval Research

Network Awareness for Wireless Peer-to-Peer Collaborative Environments

Presentation to the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Science. Hilton Waikoloa Village, Island of Hawaii, 5-8 January 2004.The implications of using mobile wireless communications are significant for emerging peer-to-peer (P2P) collaborative environments. From a networking perspective, the use of wireless technologies to support collaboration may impact bandwidth and spectrum utilization. This paper explores the effects of providing feedback to system users regarding wireless P2P network behavior on the performance of collaboration support applications. We refer to this operational feedback as "network awareness." The underlying premise is that providing feedback on the status of the network will enable users to self-organize their behavior to maintain quality of data sharing. Results achieved during an experiment conducted at the Naval Postgraduate School demonstrate significant effects of roaming on application sharing performance and integration with client-server applications. A solution for improving network aware P2P collaboration, identified in the experiment, is discussed

Evaluating a Model of Team Collaboration via Analysis of Team Communications

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 51st Annual Meeting—2007The article of record may be found at https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120705100456A model of team collaboration was developed that emphasizes the macro-cognitive processes entailed in collaboration and includes major processes that underlie this type of communication: (1) individual knowledge building, (2) developing knowledge inter-operability, (3) team shared understanding, and (4) developing team consensus. This paper describes research conducted to empirically validate this model. Team communications that transpired during two complex problem solving situations were coded using cognitive process definitions included in the model. Data was analyzed for three teams that conducted a Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) and four teams that engaged in air-warfare scenarios. MIO scenarios involve a boarding team that boards a suspect ship to search for contraband cargo (e.g. explosives, machinery) and possible terrorist suspects. Air-warfare scenarios involve identifying air contacts in the combat information center of an Aegis ship. The way the teamsí behavior on the two scenarios maps to the model of team collaboration is discussed.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Innovative Measures for the Evaluation of Command and Control Architectures

Proceedings for the 1998 Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium Command and Control for the Next Millenium June 29-July1, 1998 Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California Track 1 ArchitecturesSeveral principles of warfare have been developed through experience over time. These principles provide a framework that can be used to assess model-derived command and control architectures from a military perspective. This paper will dis-cuss and present analysis of data collected on participants’ ratings of three model-based archi-tectures on the principles of warfare to determine quantitative differences among the architectures. Comparisons of these ratings with critical dimen-sions used by modelers to optimize the architec-tures will be discussed, including feedback provid-ed during after-action reviews from military personnel who operated under these organizational architectures when responding to computer-driven scenarios. The objective was to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the three model-derived architectures vis-à- vis military principles.Cognitive and Neural Science Technology Division of ON

An Investigation of ISR Coordination and Information Presentation Strategies to Support Expeditionary Strike Groups

12th ICCRTS, Adapting C2 to the 21st CenturyThis paper describes a planned experiment based on the combined research of the Adaptive Architectures for Command and Control (A2C2) and the Command-21 programs, both of which are sponsored by the Office of Naval Research. In line with the theme of this year’s symposium, “Adapting C2 to the 21st Century,” in this research we focus on the nexus of organizational design and information presentation strategies — both of which are undergoing dramatic changes in form and function within the US military. The formation of Expeditionary Strike Groups (ESGs) provides one example of the transformational vision provided in the Naval Operating Concept where Strike Groups offer the potential to revolutionize naval warfare in the littoral region. The ESG provides a flexible force package, capable of tailoring itself to accomplish a wide variety of mission sets. In this effort, we seek to explore how ESGs with alternative structures and processes, in this case specifically related to incorporation of an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) officer and different information presen-tation strategies, can affect performance and information flow in an information rich planning and execution environment

Decision Support for Tactical Decision Making Under Stress

Abstract A decision support system was designed for naval shipboard command-level decisionmakers to enhance decisionmaking in a littoral environment or in any short-fused, ambiguous, decisionmaking situation. Design of the prototype DSS was based on (1) an understanding of the cognitive strategies people bring to bear when dealing with the types of decisions requir-ed in tactical decisionmaking, (2) applying human-system interface design principles which are expected to help compensate for human cognitive processing limitations, and (3) the extensive involvement of subject matter experts with vast command decisionmaking experience. Each DSS module will be described in terms of what decision/s it is designed to support

Electrical lithosphere beneath the Kaapvaal craton, southern Africa

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): B04105, doi:10.1029/2010JB007883.A regional-scale magnetotelluric (MT) experiment across the southern African Kaapvaal craton and surrounding terranes, called the Southern African Magnetotelluric Experiment (SAMTEX), has revealed complex structure in the lithospheric mantle. Large variations in maximum resistivity at depths to 200–250 km relate directly to age and tectonic provenance of surface structures. Within the central portions of the Kaapvaal craton are regions of resistive lithosphere about 230 km thick, in agreement with estimates from xenolith thermobarometry and seismic surface wave tomography, but thinner than inferred from seismic body wave tomography. The MT data are unable to discriminate between a completely dry or slightly “damp” (a few hundred parts per million of water) structure within the transitional region at the base of the lithosphere. However, the structure of the uppermost ∼150 km of lithosphere is consistent with enhanced, but still low, conductivities reported for hydrous olivine and orthopyroxene at levels of water reported for Kaapvaal xenoliths. The electrical lithosphere around the Kimberley and Premier diamond mines is thinner than the maximum craton thickness found between Kimberley and Johannesburg/Pretoria. The mantle beneath the Bushveld Complex is highly conducting at depths around 60 km. Possible explanations for these high conductivities include graphite or sulphide and/or iron metals associated with the Bushveld magmatic event. We suggest that one of these conductive phases (most likely melt-related sulphides) could electrically connect iron-rich garnets in a garnet-rich eclogitic composition associated with a relict subduction slab.In addition to the funding and logistical support provided by SAMTEX consortium members, this work is also supported by research grants from the National Science Foundation (EAR‐0309584 and EAR‐0455242 through the Continental Dynamics Program), the Department of Science and Technology, South Africa, and Science Foundation of Ireland (grant 05/RFP/ GEO001)

Multiple paths toward repeated phenotypic evolution in the spiny-leg adaptive radiation (Tetragnatha; Hawai'i)

The repeated evolution of phenotypes provides clear evidence for the role of natural selection in driving evolutionary change. However, the evolutionary origin of repeated phenotypes can be difficult to disentangle as it can arise from a combination of factors such as gene flow, shared ancestral polymorphisms or mutation. Here, we investigate the presence of these evolutionary processes in the Hawaiian spiny-leg Tetragnatha adaptive radiation, which includes four microhabitat-specialists or ecomorphs, with different body pigmentation and size (Green, Large Brown, Maroon, and Small Brown). We investigated the evolutionary history of this radiation using 76 newly generated low-coverage, whole-genome resequenced samples, along with phylogenetic and population genomic tools. Considering the Green ecomorph as the ancestral state, our results suggest that the Green ecomorph likely re-evolved once, the Large Brown and Maroon ecomorphs evolved twice and the Small Brown evolved three times. We found that the evolution of the Maroon and Small Brown ecomorphs likely involved ancestral hybridization events, while the Green and Large Brown ecomorphs likely evolved through novel mutations, despite a high rate of incomplete lineage sorting in the dataset. Our findings demonstrate that the repeated evolution of ecomorphs in the Hawaiian spiny-leg Tetragnatha is influenced by multiple evolutionary processes.publishedVersio

Fully transformer-based biomarker prediction from colorectal cancer histology: a large-scale multicentric study

Background: Deep learning (DL) can extract predictive and prognostic biomarkers from routine pathology slides in colorectal cancer. For example, a DL test for the diagnosis of microsatellite instability (MSI) in CRC has been approved in 2022. Current approaches rely on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Transformer networks are outperforming CNNs and are replacing them in many applications, but have not been used for biomarker prediction in cancer at a large scale. In addition, most DL approaches have been trained on small patient cohorts, which limits their clinical utility. Methods: In this study, we developed a new fully transformer-based pipeline for end-to-end biomarker prediction from pathology slides. We combine a pre-trained transformer encoder and a transformer network for patch aggregation, capable of yielding single and multi-target prediction at patient level. We train our pipeline on over 9,000 patients from 10 colorectal cancer cohorts. Results: A fully transformer-based approach massively improves the performance, generalizability, data efficiency, and interpretability as compared with current state-of-the-art algorithms. After training on a large multicenter cohort, we achieve a sensitivity of 0.97 with a negative predictive value of 0.99 for MSI prediction on surgical resection specimens. We demonstrate for the first time that resection specimen-only training reaches clinical-grade performance on endoscopic biopsy tissue, solving a long-standing diagnostic problem. Interpretation: A fully transformer-based end-to-end pipeline trained on thousands of pathology slides yields clinical-grade performance for biomarker prediction on surgical resections and biopsies. Our new methods are freely available under an open source license