Parliament’s Response to Charkaoui: Bill C-3 and the Special Advocate Regime under IRPA

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Charkaoui and Parliament’s subsequent enactment of Bill C-3 demonstrate how the Charter dialogue between the judiciary and legislatures can enhance the protection of constitutional rights and freedoms while preserving the ability of elected officials to pursue legitimate policy objectives.The notion of constitutional dialogue suggests that Charkaoui be read as setting parameters for future legislative action, recognizing not only those aspects of the security certificate scheme where the Court found constitutional deficiencies, but also those where it found the scheme to be constitutionally sound. The Court’s conclusion that the in camera, ex parte hearing process violated the right to a fair hearing obviously constrained the scope of permissible action left open to Parliament. However, it is equally significant that the Court endorsed the general objective of the certificate process and afforded Parliament considerable latitude to remedy the constitutional deficiencies it had identified. Bill C-3 demonstrates the different levels at which the constitutional dialogue between the judiciary and Parliament may take place. In those areas where the Court held that the Charter mandates a specific result, Parliament responded accordingly. Even in some areas where the Court rejected challenges to the previous certificate regime, Parliament addressed some issues that continued to affect the perceived fairness of the process. And, on the central fair hearing issue where the Court indicated that the Charter required greater procedural protections but did not stipulate precisely what more should be done, Parliament adopted the solution it deemed most appropriate: A special advocate regime. Despite criticisms of Bill C-3, it protects the named person’s right to a fair hearing while still ensuring that national security is not compromised, and is likely to pass constitutional scrutiny

Deep residual neural network for EMI event classification using bispectrum representation

This paper presents a novel method for condition monitoring of High Voltage (HV) power plant equipment through analysis of discharge signals. These discharge signals are measured using the Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) method and processed using third order Higher-Order Statistics (HOS) to obtain a Bispectrum representation. By mapping the time-domain signal to a Bispectrum image representations the problem can be approached as an image classification task. This allows for the novel application of a Deep Residual Neural Network (ResNet) to the classification of HV discharge signals. The network is trained on signals into 9 classes and achieves high classification accuracy in each category, improving upon our previous work on this task

Evaluating Player Strategies in the Design of a Hot Hand Game

The user’s strategy and their approach to decisionmakingare two important concerns when designing user-centricsoftware. While decision-making and strategy are key factors in awide range of business systems from stock market trading tomedical diagnosis, in this paper we focus on the role these factorsplay in a serious computer game. Players may adopt individualstrategies when playing a computer game. Furthermore, differentapproaches to playing the game may impact on the effectivenessof the core mechanics designed into the game play. In this paperwe investigate player strategy in relation to two serious gamesdesigned for studying the ‘hot hand’. The ‘hot hand’ is aninteresting psychological phenomenon originally studied in sportssuch as basketball. The study of ‘hot hand’ promises to shedfurther light on cognitive decision-making tasks applicable todomains beyond sport. The ‘hot hand’ suggests that playerssometimes display above average performance, get on a hotstreak, or develop ‘hot hands’. Although this is a widely heldbelief, analysis of data in a number of sports has produced mixedfindings. While this lack of evidence may indicate belief in the hothand is a cognitive fallacy, alternate views have suggested thatthe player’s strategy, confidence, and risk-taking may accountfor the difficulty of measuring the hot hand. Unfortunately, it isdifficult to objectively measure and quantify the amount of risktaking in a sporting contest. Therefore to investigate thisphenomenon more closely we developed novel, tailor-madecomputer games that allow rigorous empirical study of ‘hothands’. The design of such games has some specific designrequirements. The gameplay needs to allow players to perform asequence of repeated challenges, where they either fail or succeedwith about equal likelihood. Importantly the design also needs toallow players to choose a strategy entailing more or less risk inresponse to their current performance. In this paper we comparetwo hot hand game designs by collecting empirical data thatcaptures player performance in terms of success and level ofdifficulty (as gauged by response time). We then use a variety ofanalytical and visualization techniques to study player strategiesin these games. This allows us to detect a key design flaw the firstgame and validate the design of the second game for use infurther studies of the hot hand phenomenon

Energy-Resolved Femtosecond Hot Electron Dynamics in Single Plasmonic Nanoparticles

Efficient excitation and harvesting of hot carriers are central to a variety of emerging nanoplasmonic applications, but ballistic carrier extraction remains a challenge. To elucidate the relevant dynamics as a function of nanoscale geometry, we perform femtosecond two-color pump-probe photoemission studies of single gold nanorods and gold/silica nanoshells with simultaneous time, energy, and vector momentum resolution. Angle-resolved photoelectron momentum distributions elucidate the dominant intraband photoexcitation mechanism and subsequent ballistic dynamics within the gold nanoparticle volume, as verified via Monte Carlo photoemission modeling. Energy-averaged hot electron lifetimes around 30 fs are measured in the ~1-2 eV excitation energy range, while energy-resolved measurements reveal good agreement with Fermi liquid theory behavior based on electron-electron inelastic scattering, as well as more detailed kinetic Boltzmann modeling including the effects of electron cascading from higher energy levels and quasi-elastic electron phonon scattering. These results directly demonstrate the predominance of bulk-like hot electron dynamical behaviors (including volume-like excitation and bulk inelastic scattering rates) in metal nanoparticles with dimensions as small as 10 nm, which should contribute to the design of more efficient hot carrier devices

Neurophysiological and brain structural markers of cognitive frailty differs from Alzheimer’s disease

AbstractWith increasing life span, there is growing importance of understanding the mechanisms of successful cognitive ageing. In contrast, cognitive frailty has been proposed to be a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease. Here we test the hypothesis that cognitively frail adults represent a branch of healthy ageing, distinct from latent dementia. We used electro-magnetoencephalography and magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the structural and neurophysiological features of cognitive frailty in relation to healthy aging, and clinical presentations of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Cognitive performance of the cognitively frail group was similar to those with mild cognitive impairment. We used a novel cross-modal oddball task to induce mismatch responses to unexpected stimuli. Both controls and cognitively frail showed stronger mismatch responses and larger temporal grey matter volume, compared to people with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. Our results suggest that cognitively frail represents a spectrum of normal ageing rather than incipient or undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease. Lower cognitive reserve, hearing impairment and medical comorbidity might contribute to the aetiology of cognitive impairment.The study was supported by the Medical Research Council [SUAG/004 RG91365, SUAG/046 RG101400; SUAG/051 RG101400], the Wellcome Trust [103838], the Dementias Platform UK [MR/L023784/1 & MR/L023784/2], Alzheimer’s Research UK [ARUK-PG2017B-19], a Holt Fellowship, and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC-1215-20014). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission

Evaluation of Model Microphysics Within Precipitation Bands of Extratropical Cyclones

Recent studies evaluating the bulk microphysical schemes (BMPs) within cloud resolving models (CRMs) have indicated large uncertainties and errors in the amount and size distributions of snow and cloud ice aloft. The snow prediction is sensitive to the snow densities, habits, and degree of riming within the BMPs. Improving these BMPs is a crucial step toward improving both weather forecasting and climate predictions. Several microphysical schemes in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model down to 1.33km grid spacing are evaluated using aircraft, radar, and ground in situ data from the Global Precipitation Mission Coldseason Precipitation Experiment (GCPEx) experiment, as well as a few years (15 winter storms) of surface measurements of riming, crystal habit, snow density, and radar measurements at Stony Brook, NY (SBNY on north shore of Long Island) during the 2009-2012 winter seasons. Surface microphysical measurements at SBNY were taken every 15 to 30 minutes using a stereo microscope and camera, and snow depth and snow density were also recorded. During these storms, a vertically-pointing Ku-band radar was used to observe the vertical evolution of reflectivity and Doppler vertical velocities. A Particle Size and Velocity (PARSIVEL) disdrometer was also used to measure the surface size distribution and fall speeds of snow at SBNY. For the 15 cases at SBNY, the WSM6, Morrison (MORR), Thompson (THOM2), and Stony Brook (SBU-YLIN) BMPs were validated. A non-spherical snow assumption (THOM2 and SBU-YLIN) simulated a more realistic distribution of reflectivity than spherical snow assumptions in the WSM6 and MORR schemes. The MORR, WSM6, and SBU-YLIN schemes are comparable to the observed velocity distribution in light and moderate riming periods. The THOM2 is ~0.25 meters per second too slow with its velocity distribution in these periods. In heavier riming, the vertical Doppler velocities in the WSM6, THOM2, and MORR schemes were ~0.25 meters per second too slow, while the SBU-YLIN was 0.25 to 0.5 meters per second too fast. Overall, the BMPs simulate a size distribution close to the observed for D 6 mm in the dendrites, side planes, and mixed habit periods, the BMPs are likely not simulating enough aggregation to create a larger size distribution, although the MORR (double moment) scheme seemed to perform best. These SBNY results will be compared with some results from GCPEx for a warm frontal snow band observed at 18 February 2012