Systems that Should Have Failed: Critical Infrastructure Protection in an Institutionally Fragmented Environment

Recent years have witnessed major governmental initiatives regarding critical infrastructure protection (CIP). During that same time, critical infrastructures (CIs) have undergone massive institutional restructuring under the headings of privatization, deregulation and liberalization. Little research has gone into understanding the interactions between these two developments. In this article, we outline the consequences of institutional restructuring for the changing ways in which CIs ensure the reliability and security of their networks and services. Neither Normal Accident Theory nor High‐Reliability Theory can account for reliability under these conditions. We then investigate the implications of these findings for CIP.     

A single-grain approach applied to the modeling of recrystallization kinetics for cold-rolled single-phase metals

A comprehensive model for the recrystallization kinetics is proposed which incorporates both microstructure and the textural components in the deformed state. The model is based on the single-grain approach proposed previously. The influence of the as-deformed grain orientation, which affects the stored energy via subgrain size and sub-boundary misorientation, is taken into account. The effects of the deformed grain geometry, the nucleation-site density, and the initial grain size prior to deformation on the recrystallization kinetics are assessed. The model is applied to the recrystallization kinetics of a cold-rolled AA1050 alloy.     

Cognitive impenetrability of memory for orientation.

This research produced evidence that an aspect of visual long-term memory—memory for lateral orientation of pictures—is constrained by a viewer-centered or egocentric reference frame. Subjects in Experiment 1 verbally encoded and then verbally recalled the locations of objects within scenic pictures. Recall of locations in terms of left-right directions (using a viewer-centered frame) exceeded recall of locations in terms of relative proximities to features of the room (using an environmental frame), even if the relative proximities had been verbalized at input. Subjects in Experiment 2 viewed half of a list of pictures directly and the remainder, reflected in a mirror. They then took a test in which they classified old pictures—all viewed directly— as "same-orientation" or "reversed." Performance was much better with a viewer-centered definition of same orientation (Does the picture appear the same way around?) than with an environmental definition (Is the picture the same way around on the screen?), even with forewarning of an environmental orientation test. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A fuzzy logic rule-based automatic target recognizer

Methods for modeling and managing uncertainty in computer vision systems have received increased attention in recent years. Automatic target recognition is one application area of computer vision where the demands are particularly acute. In this article, fuzzy logic is proposed as a means of handling uncertainty in an expert system structure for automatic target recognition. A new technique for logical inference is described which is well-suited for this type of application. A prototype system has been developed and tested on multisensor and temporal images. the results are compared to a similar expert system which used a numeric uncertainty calculus.     

Numerical Modeling of Silicon Photodiodes for High-Accuracy Applications Part I. Simulation Programs

The suitability of the semiconductor-device modeling program PC-1D for high-accuracy simulation of silicon photodiodes is discussed. A set of user interface programs optimized to support high-accuracy batch-mode operation of PC-1D for modeling the internal quantum efficiency of photodiodes is also described. The optimization includes correction for the dark current under reverse- and forward-bias conditions before calculating the quantum efficiency, and easy access to the highest numerical accuracy available from PC-1D, neither of which is conveniently available with PC-1D’s standard user interface.