Decision Making Effectiveness in Wildfire Incident Management Teams

During large scale wildfires, suppression activities are carried out under the direction of an Incident Management Team (IMT). The aim of the research was to increase understanding of decision processes potentially related to IMT effectiveness. An IMT comprises four major functions: Command, Operations, Planning, and Logistics. Four methodologies were used to study IMT processes: computer simulation experiments; analyses of wildfire reports; interviews with IMT members; and cognitive ethnographic studies of IMTs. Three processes were important determinants of IMT effectiveness: information management and cognitive overload; matching component function goals to overall goals; and team metacognition to detect and counter task‐disruptive developments. These processes appear to be complex multi‐person analogues of individual Incident Command processes identified previously. The findings have implications for issues such as: creating IMTs; training IMTs; managing IMTs; and providing decision support to IMTs.     

A One-Dimensional Nonlocal Damage-Plasticity Model for Ductile Materials

This paper presents a new 1-D non-local damage-plasticity deformation model for ductile materials. It uses the thermodynamic framework described in Houlsby and Puzrin (2000) and holds, nevertheless, some similarities with Lemaitre’s (1971) approach. A 1D finite element (FE) model of a bar fixed at one end and loaded in tension at the other end is introduced. This simple model demonstrates how the approach can be implemented within the finite element framework, and that it is capable of capturing both the pre-peak hardening and post-peak softening (generally responsible for models instability) due to damage-induced stiffness and strength reduction characteristic of ductile materials. It is also shown that the approach has further advantages of achieving some degree of mesh independence, and of being able to capture deformation size effects. Finally, it is illustrated how the model permits the calculation of essential work of rupture (EWR), i.e. the specific energy per unit cross-sectional area that is needed to cause tensile failure of a specimen.     

Ugtracold Alkali Atoms in Optical Lattices: A New Type of Quantum Crystals?

Similarities between alkali gases in optical lattices with non-integer occupation of the lattice sites and quantum crystals are explored. The analogy with the vacancy liquid provides an agternative explanation to the Mott transition for the recent experiment on the phase transition in the lattice. The vacancy liquid can undergo BEC with T _c within experimental reach. Direct and vacancy-assisted mechanisms of the band motion for hyperfine impurities are discussed. The presence of vacancies can resugt in the spatial decomposition of the system into pure hyperfine components. Below BEC for the vacancies, the impurity component resembles ³He in ³He-Hell mixtures.     

Meßtechnik zur Charakterisierung von Gas/Flüssigkeits-Reaktoren

Measuring techniques for characterizing gas/liquid reactors . The article considers measuring techniques for the characterization of the phases in gas/liquid reactors. These include the velocity profile and turbulence in the continuous phase as well as holdup, size, and velocity of the dispersed phase. Also, methods for the determination of the specific interfacial area and the volumetric mass transfer coefficients are discussed. Measuring methods have made enormous advances in recent years. In spite of this, there is a lack of reliable methods, especially for use during reactions without disturbing the state of the reactor. It is suspected that probe technique will gradually fall into disuse and more and more attention will be focussed on contractless methods. This calls for further development of ultrasonic methods and methods relying on emission of light.     

Game AI is Dead. Long Live Game AI!

This paper discusses how the recent advances in game AI technology can help benefit industry and the academia. Some of these advances include large-scale automated art and content generation, automated storytelling, goal-driven virtual actors, and the ability to adapt to the player's preferences and mental state     

Random sequence multisets for synchronous code-divisionmultiple-access channels

The effect of using randomly selected sequence multisets for the uplink of a synchronous code-division multiple-access channel is considered. A tight lower bound on the expected value of the sum capacity over the ensemble of randomly selected sequence multisets is given. For large systems, the sum rate penalty for using randomly selected multisets is shown to be at most 1 nat and to vanish as the number of users becomes large, compared to the sequence length