This study develops and empirically tests a model of the determinants of federal spending for crime-fighting policies. An inter-disciplinary approach to building the model is utilized that merges ideas from budgeting, policy analysis and criminology. Four factors hypothesized to impact federal spending for the administration of justice are operationalized as eight variables and tested using ordinary least squares regression analysis on time series data. The factors hypothesized to impact federal spending in this area are economic constraints imposed on government spending, the ideological makeup of Congress and the president, the actual crime rate, and the public's attitude toward crime. Five of the eight variables demonstrated statistical significance at the.10 level or better.

This report covers the eight week design project for the Thesis Project 1 and it looks at both the process and the results of this project. Through an iterative prototyping process a prototype was created to answer the research question: “What gameplay mechanics are required for a fighting style video game to allow for analog input in its character movements and do these mechanics allow for more natural controls and mastery?” Together with research into academic writing in the fields of neurology, embodied design and game design it was concluded that an analog control scheme, within the context of a video game that allows for that type of affordance, gives the user more natural control over the character they are playing. This was validated by playtesting the prototype with several users. However, the richness of the mastery of a game relies heavily on the implemented game elements in a finalized game and was therefore unanswered in this project. There were also constraints and game mechanics identified for game designers to keep in mind when designing a game that relies on this type of analog input. The project also raised a number of questions and new design opportunities that were unable to be explored due to the limited scope of the project.

As there seem to be a relationship between child soldiering and increased fighting capacity, there appears to be logical advantages of using child soldiers. However, research suggest that children ought to be inferior soldiers than adults. This pinpoints the need for clarifications regarding what disadvantages are associated with the benefits of using child soldiers. As child soldiering has mainly been investigated out of a perspective of systemic influences, there is a need to better understand the recruitment decision side; why rebel leaders prefer to recruit children. While the quantitative research on civil conflicts has tried to identify what ingredients that make conflict severe, the presence of child soldiers has been suggested to be, perhaps not such an ingredient, but at least an exacerbating one. By conducting a quantitative analysis of data on civil conflicts between 1989 and 2010, this study asks how the use of child soldiers affects the severity of the conflict, in terms of rebel losses. As the hypothesis suggests that rebel groups that are using child soldiers have a higher number of rebel losses, the results of this study indicate that the hypothesis is supported. Based on the results of this study, it can be argued that there are costs associated with the benefits of increased fighting capacity, and that these costs are high, when measured in rebel losses.

Many online fighting games use rollback netcode in order to compensate for network delay. Rollback netcode allows players to experience the game as having reduced delay. A drawback of this is that players will sometimes see the game quickly ”jump” to a different state to adjust for the the remote player’s actions. Rollback netcode implementations require a method for predicting the remote player’s next button inputs. Current implementations use a naive repeatlastframe policy for such prediction. There is a possibility that alternative methods may lead to improved user experience. This project examines the problem of improving input prediction in fighting games. It details the development of a new prediction model based on recurrent neural networks. The model was trained and evaluated using a dataset of several thousand recorded player input sequences. The results show that the new model slightly outperforms the naive method in prediction accuracy, with the difference being greater for longer predictions. However, it has far higher requirements both in terms of memory and computation cost. It seems unlikely that the model would significantly improve on current rollback netcode implementations. However, there may be ways to improve predictions further, and the effects on user experience remains unknown. / Många online fightingspel använder rollback netcode för att kompensera för nätverksfördröjning. Rollback netcode låter spelare uppleva spelet med mindre fördröjning. En nackdel av detta är att spelare ibland ser spelet snabbt ”hoppa” till ett annat tillstånd för att justera för motspelarens handlingar. Rollback netcode implementationer behöver en policy för att förutsäga motspelarens nästa knapptryckningar. Nuvarande implementationer använder en naiv repetera-senaste-frame policy för förutsägelser. Det finns en möjlighet att alternativa metoder kan leda till förbättrad användarupplevelse. Det här projektet undersöker problemet att förbättra förutsägelser av knapptryckningar i fightingspel. Det beskriver utvecklingen av en ny förutsägelsemodell baserad på rekursiva neuronnät. Modellen tränades och evaluerades med ett dataset av flera tusen inspelade knappsekvenser. Resultaten visar att den nya modellen överträffar den naiva metoden i noggrannhet, med större skillnad för längre förutsägelser. Dock har den mycket högre krav i både minne och beräkningskostad. Det verkar osannolikt att modellen skulle avsevärt förbättra nuvarande rollback netcode implementationer. Men det kan finnas sätt att förbättra förutsägelser ytterligare, och påverkan på användarupplevelsen förblir okänd.

This is an early history of Mixed Martial Arts in America. It focuses primarily on the political campaign to ban the sport in the 1990s and the repercussions that campaign had on MMA itself. Furthermore, it examines the censorship of music and video games in the 1990s. The central argument of this work is that the political campaign to ban Mixed Martial Arts was part of a larger political movement to censor violent entertainment. Connections are shown in the actions and rhetoric of politicians who attacked music, video games and the Ultimate Fighting Championship on the grounds that it glorified violence. The political pressure exerted on the sport is largely responsible for the eventual success and widespread acceptance of MMA. The pressure forced the sport to regulate itself and transformed it into something more acceptable to mainstream America

Geosynthetic tubes have the potential to replace the traditional flood protection device of sandbagging. These tubes are manufactured with many individual designs and configurations. A small number of studies have been conducted on the geosynthetic tubes as water barriers. Within these studies, none have discussed the dynamics of unanchored geosynthetic tubes. A two-dimensional equilibrium and vibration analysis of a freestanding geosynthetic tube is executed. Air and water are the two internal materials investigated. Three foundation variations are considered: rigid, Winkler, and Pasternak. Mathematica 4.2 was employed to solve the nonlinear equilibrium and dynamic equations, incorporating boundary conditions by use of a shooting method. General assumptions are made that involve the geotextile material and supporting surface. The geosynthetic material is assumed to act like an inextensible membrane and bending resistance is neglected. Friction between the tube and rigid supporting surface is neglected. Added features of viscous damping and added mass of the water were applied to the rigid foundation study of the vibrations about the freestanding equilibrium configuration. Results from the equilibrium and dynamic analysis include circumferential tension, contact length, equilibrium and vibration shapes, tube settlement, and natural frequencies. Natural frequencies for the first four mode shapes were computed. Future models may incorporate the frequencies or combinations of the frequencies found here and develop dynamic loading simulations. / Master of Science

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:30:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Priscilla Bigotte Donato.pdf: 608260 bytes, checksum: 019e43c29b08331fb0f6a83785b3cb35 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-06-21 / Terrorism fighting has become a challenge to the recent International Community. The means and the techniques used by terrorists have become more evolved, organized and deadly than ever. Fighting terrorism using their same weapons does not solve the problem. It is imperative that international legal system can provide support for combating terrorism, defining the situations that involve the terrorists allowing its punishment / O combate ao terrorismo representa um desafio à Comunidade Internacional atual. As técnicas e meios por eles utilizados estão cada vez mais evoluídos e organizados, e cada vez mais mortais. Combater o terrorismo com as mesmas armas não resolve o problema. É necessário que o sistema jurídico internacional dê apoio para o combate do terrorismo, regulando as situações que envolvam os terroristas, permitindo sua punição

Criado pelo Banco Mundial, no bojo das políticas neoliberais de ajuste estrutural, e adotado pelo Estado brasileiro na década de 1990, o modelo de reforma agrária de mercado representa uma tentativa de contensão das tensões sociais no campo por meio da desmobilização dos movimentos sociais de luta pela terra. No entanto, os desdobramentos nocivos dessas ações políticas vão além. A implementação desse modelo, dito de reforma agrária, representa ainda: a expansão do capital financeiro no campo; o aquecimento do mercado de terras e da especulação; inaugura uma nova modalidade de recriação do campesinato, protagonizada pelo mercado; e cria um conflito entre a lógica capitalista de propriedade privada da terra e a concepção de terra de trabalho, na visão camponesa. A presente pesquisa visa analisar a inserção do modelo de reforma agrária de mercado nos municípios de Londrina e Tamarana, localizados na região Norte do estado do Paraná, por meio da análise da produção do espaço agrário dos referidos municípios que favoreceu a penetração do modelo; da avaliação das políticas de desenvolvimento rural propostas pelo Banco Mundial e adotadas pelo Estado brasileiro; e, por meio da análise de elementos, como: sujeição da renda camponesa da terra ao capital, reprodução social e material das famílias assentadas e conflitos existentes no interior das diferentes formas de sociabilidade dos camponeses, verificamos a inviabilidade dos assentamentos rurais criados a partir dos programas de reforma agrária de mercado, pautados na ótica neoliberal de desenvolvimento rural do Banco Mundial. / Created by the World Bank, in the midst of the neoliberal policies of structural adjustment, and adopted by the Brazilian state in the 1990s, the model of market agrarian reform represents an attempt at containment of social tensions in rural areas through the demobilization of social movements fighting the land. However, the harmful consequences of these actions go beyond policies. The implementation of this model, called the \"land reform\", is still: the expansion of financial capital in the field, the \"warming\" of the land market and speculation, inaugurates a new mode of recreation of the peasantry, led by the market and creates a conflict between the logic of capitalist private ownership of land and the design of earth work, vision peasant. This research aims to analyze the inclusion of the model of agrarian market reform in the municipalities of Londrina and Tamarana, located in northern Paraná state, through the analysis of agricultural production space of those counties that favored the penetration of the model; of evaluation of rural development policies proposed by the World Bank and adopted by the Brazilian State, and, through the analysis of elements, such as subjecting the income of peasant land to capital, material and social reproduction of families settled and conflicts within the various forms of sociability of the peasants, we see the inevitability of rural settlements created from the agrarian reform programs in the market, lined the neoliberal perspective on rural development under the World Bank.

"Understanding fire behavior is critical to effective tactical decision making on the fireground, particularly since fireground operations significantly impact the growth and spread of the fire. Computer-based simulation is a flexible, low-cost training methodology with proven success in fields such as pilot training, space, and military applications. Computer-based simulation may enhance fire behavior training and promote effective fireground decision making. This study evaluates the potential of the NIST Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and Smokeview to be utilized as a part of a computer-based fire fighter trainer. Laboratory compartment fire experiments and full-scale fire experiments in a live-fire training facility were both conducted as part of the NIST Multiphase Study on Fire Fighter Safety and the Deployment of Resources. The laboratory experiments characterized the burning behavior of wood pallets to design a repeatable fire for use in the field experiments. The field experiments observed the effects of varying fire fighter deployment configurations on the performance times of fire fighter actions at a live fire training facility. These actions included opening the front door and fire suppression. Because the field experiments simulated numerous fire department responses to a repeatable fire, data were available to evaluate FDS simulation of heat and smoke spread, and changes in the thermal environment after the front door is opened and fire suppressed. In simulating the field experiments, the laboratory-measured heat release rate was used as an input. Given this assumption, this study has two objectives: 1) to determine if simulations accurately spread heat and smoke through a multi-level, multi-compartment live fire training facility 2) to determine if the simulations properly reproduce changes in the thermal environment that result from two typical fire fighter actions: opening the front door and fire suppression. In simulation, heat and smoke spread to measurement locations throughout the test structure at times closely matching experimentally measured times. Predictions of peak temperatures near the ceiling were within approximately 20% for all measurement locations. Hot gas layer temperature and depth were both predicted within 10% of the floor to ceiling height. After the front door was opened, temperature changes near the door at the highest and lowest measurement locations matched with temperature changes in the experiments. After fire suppression, FDS simulated temperature decay at a rate within the range measured in the field experiments and approximated the total rise of the hot gas layer interface in the burn compartment 250 seconds after suppression."

A wide variety of factors are predicted to influence the intensity and outcome of agonistic interactions in animals, including the resource holding potential of the opponents and the nature and value of the resource over which the individuals are competing. Field crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) have been used extensively as model organisms with which to study animal contests, but relatively few studies have examined the effect of mandible size or structure, or the level of contact with females on the intensity and outcome of agonistic interactions. To do so was the aim of the present thesis, using Gryllus bimaculatus as the study species. The first finding of this study was that there is a significant degree of sexual dimorphism for anterior components of the anatomy in G. bimaculatus. The mandibles, head and pronotum of male crickets were all relatively larger than those of females. This indicates that these traits may be acted upon by intrasexual selection. In many animal species that show sexual dimorphism, a trade-off in development sees enhanced weapon growth at the expense of testes size, but no such relationship was seen in this species. A comparison of the mandible structure of males that either won or lost at flaring and or wrestling showed that a relatively wider mandible span was a significant predictor of success during mandible displays. It was also found that specific components of tooth structure, namely the length of the incisor and length to distal tip, were significantly associated with victory at the jaw flaring stage. This is the first time that mandible shape has been shown to affect fight outcome in the Gryllidae, and also the first confirmed identification of a visual cue component of fighting behaviour. Despite the effectiveness of their weapons in fighting, body mass is a primary predictor of victory in combat between G. bimaculatus males, with the greater the degree of asymmetry in weight the more likely the heavier fighter will win. However, a study of fighting behaviour between asymmetrically matched opponents found that even males who were out-weighed by 40% were still likely to escalate the fight to grappling. Furthermore, males who were able to fend off their larger opponent in their first clash were significantly more likely to win their overall encounter. This hyper-aggressive response may therefore represent an adaptive mechanism to extreme odds and is worthy of further study. Female contact is known to be a significant promoter of male aggression and fighting enthusiasm, and mate guarding aggression is well documented in G. bimaculatus. A recreation of two contradictory studies, including one which concluded that mating makes males lose fights, highlighted that female contact after spermatophore transfer can overcome the loser effect and cause a male to re-engage with a previously dominant opponent. Fighting behaviour in this species is therefore highly flexible and factors affecting the outcome of contests are complex. There is much scope for further studies on this topic.