searchfortruth.info > Blog > 2017 > July > Page 13

Month: July 2017

On Shooting a Moving Vehicle with Data Flows

by

Abstract

This paper proposes an ITS system that uses not only integrated cellular and ad hoc relaying technologies, but also users’ mobility profiles. It focuses on a subsystem where cellular bandwidth is used mostly for control signals, and an ad hoc distribution network (ADN) is used for file downloading and video streaming. The paper formulates an optimization problem with the objective being to maximize the amount of data to be delivered to a moving vehicles via the ADN, and thereby minimizing the usage of the costly cellular bandwidth for data transfer. Three approaches based on non-linear and linear programs are described and compared, and simulation results indicate that a satisfying performance for file download applications can be achieved.

I. INTRODUCTION

We envision an architecture for ITS in metropolitan areas that integrates the cellular and ad hoc relaying technologies. The proposed architecture, called iCAR-MOPA 1 , will provide various services to vehicles, which include file downloading, stored or real-time video streaming, and customized traffic...

Read More!

Gunshot Wounds: A Primer

by

Case
9-1-1 receives a call from the owner of a liquor store near the county line who has just been shot in the face by a robber. The man is alert and coherent with slurred speech. He is requesting immediate assistance from police and ambulance. He warns dispatchers that he anticipates the return of the thief because, in his haste to escape with the cash, the perpetrator forgot his wallet. Shortly thereafter, the 9-1-1 operator hears shouting and two distinct sets of gunshots. Introduction
Firearms and gunshot wounds are now common in today’s society. Hot debate continues to rage regarding cause, effect and the best way to handle the ever- increasing number of deaths resulting from guns. Emergency services must also examine their response to such an environment. This article provides a brief overview of current information on the subject. Before You Arrive Prior to arriving on the scene of a shooting, assess the situation. Security is paramount. Has law

Read More!

Guns Used in Crime

by

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), almost 43.6 million criminal victimizations occurred in 1993, including 4.4 million violent crimes of rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. Of the victims of these violent crimes, 1.3 million (29%) stated that they faced an offender with a firearm.* In 1993, the FBI's Crime in the United States estimated that almost 2 million violent crimes of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were reported to the police by citizens. About 582,000 of these reported murders, robberies, and aggravated assaults were committed with firearms. Murder was the crime that most frequently involved firearms; 70% of the 24,526 murders in 1993 were committed with firearms. How do we know about the guns used by criminals? No national collection of data contains detailed information about all of the guns used in crimes. Snapshots of information about the guns used by criminals are available from  official police records concerning the guns recovered in crimes and reports...

Read More!

Firearms and Toolmarks

by

Firearms and Toolmarks
The Firearm and Toolmarks section conducts a wide variety of examinations ranging from function testing of firearms to serial number restoration to fracture matching. The most commonly requested examination, incorrectly referred to as ballistics testing, is determining whether ammunition components were fired from a particular firearm.

Using valid scientific procedures, the Firearm and Toolmark section conducts safety and function testing on firearms, analyzes fired ammunition components to determine general rifling characteristics, compare fired and unfired ammunition components to determine if they were fired by a specific firearm, restore serial numbers that have been obscured or obliterated, conduct distance determinations to estimate muzzle to target distance, conduct ejection pattern tests, reconstruct shooting scenes, determine if a specific tool made a certain toolmark, and conduct fracture match examinations. The Firearm and Toolmarks section conducts several trainings throughout the year, and testifies in court to the results of examinations.

The Firearms and Tool Mark section is broken down into several sub-disciplines:

  • Firearms Examination
  • Toolmark Analysis
  • Serial Number Restoration

Read More!

Gunshot Wounds

by

Characteristics of the bullet and of the tissues through which it travels. In addition to the mass and velocity of the bullet, its orientation and whether it fragments or deforms affect the nature of the wound. Two major mechanisms of wounding are described: crushing and stretching of tissue. Understanding the mechanisms by which bullets disrupt tissue can help physicians to evaluate and treat wounds. The characteristics and severity of a gunshot wound are determined by the design of the weapon and projectile, the intermediate targets the projectile encounters between the gun muzzle and the body, and the sequence of tissues encountered along the projectile path. Although the skill of the person firing the weapon affects the trajectory, chance also plays a role. If the missile path includes a large bone, or if the projectile strikes a button, belt buckle, or other hard object, the seventy of the wound often increases [1, 2]. To some extent, whether the bullet hits a particular wound modifying structure...

Additional Resource: Gunshot Wounds: 1. Bullets, Ballistics, and Mechanisms of Injury (2842 downloads )

Read More!

Offender Profiling And Criminal Differentiation

by

Purpose. The psychological hypotheses that form the foundations for ‘Offender Profiling’ are identified and the research that has tested them is reviewed.
Argument. Offender profiling’ is taken to be the derivation of inferences about a criminal from aspects of the crime(s) s/he has committed. For this process to move beyond deduction based on personal opinion and anecdote to an empirically based science a number of aspects of criminal activity need to be distinguished and examined. The notion of a hierarchy of criminal differentiation is introduced to highlight the need to search for consistencies and variations at many levels of that hierarchy. However, current research indicates that the key distinctions are those that differentiate, within classes of crime, between offences and between offenders,. This also leads to the hypothesis of a circular ordering of criminal actions, analogous to the colour circle, a ‘radex’. The radex model, tested using Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) procedures, allows specific hypotheses to be developed about important constituents of criminal differentiation:...

Read More!

Trauma and Gunshot Wounds

by

Introduction

By the time you finish reading this story, a dozen Americans will have died from a trauma death. Trauma is the leading killer of Americans from one to 44 years of age. There are 18 deaths per hour from traumatic injury. In the military setting, despite the increase in firepower, the number of deaths during war has decreased. In World War II, 30% of the Americans injured in combat died. In Vietnam, this number dropped to 24%. In the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, about 10 percent of those injured have died. The reduction of deaths can be attributed to better trauma systems, timely access to medical care, and newer trauma approaches. This is why it is important for you to know what to do in the event of a trauma.An understanding of what to do in different trauma scenarios could make the difference between life and death for you or your partner. This article outlines some basic information on acute...

Read More!

Study of Assassination

by

PLANNING

When the decision to assassinate has been reached, the tactics of the operation must be planned, based upon an estimate of the situation similar to that used in military operations. The preliminary estimate will reveal gaps in information and possibly indicate a need for special equipment which must be procured or constructed. When all necessary data has been collected, an effective tactical plan can be prepared. All planning must be mental; no papers should ever contain evidence of the operation. In resistance situations, assassination may be used as a counter-reprisal. Since this requires advertising to be effective, the resistance organization must be in a position to warn high officials publicly that their lives will be the price of reprisal action against innocent people. Such a threat is of no value unless it can be carried out, so it may be necessary to plan the assassination of various responsible officers of the oppressive regime and hold such plans in readiness to be used only if provoked...

Read More!

Police Surveillance

by

New developments in police surveillance are getting a lot of attention. Many people are, of course, impressed by the eye-popping gear which, not long ago, was available only to science fiction writers. But more importantly, today’s surveillance technology is making a difference. For example, surveillance cameras on city streets and in crime-ravaged neighborhoods help provide a safer environment because criminals prefer not to have an audience, especially one that might include officers and jurors. As one commentator observed, “With their long-range and wide-area monitoring capabilities, surveillance cameras have a significant deterring effect, and have helped police foil many of the crimes that take place in public such as vandalism, mugging, car theft, drug distribution, and drive-by shooting.” As a result, surveillance cameras are becoming somewhat commonplace, especially in cities. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The trend is unmistakable in the Bay Area: San Jose is seeking four cameras downtown. Oakland recently bought about a dozen. Pittsburg has installed 13 cameras, plus a live-monitoring room.”

Read More!

Who Killed Mickey Thompson

by

On March 16, 1988, Mickey Thompson and his wife Trudy were killed by two gunmen at their home in Bradbury, California in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.[4]

On the morning of the murder two gunmen waited outside of the Thompson home for Mickey and Trudy to leave for the day - Mickey opened the garage door for Trudy to pull out in her vehicle, and as he headed for his own vehicle.   to pull out of the garage the gunmen attacked, shooting and wounding Mickey and then dragging him out into the driveway, and then one of the gunmen went after Trudy as she was driving down the driveway in her vehicle and shot and killed her.

Read More!

Fact Sheet on Private Military Firms

by

1. Private Military Firms (PMFs) are private businesses who recruit and train individuals, known as private military security contractors, in the techniques of arms and armaments, both for foreign wars and domestic policing. Such a company trains its contractors to use a wide range of weapons from pistols to rocket launchers. They also teach techniques of attack, capture, and interrogation. These companies maintain databases of contractors that can be assembled at a moment's notice, like a small army. For example Blackwater Worldwide boasts their database is 21,000.contractors. These contractors are then deployed on assignments for governments and for corporations.
2. Between 1994 and 2002 US-based Private Military Security Companies received more than 3,000 contracts worth over $300 billion from the U.S. Department of Defense.
3. Currently over 800,000 contractors have security clearances at 11,000 government facilities.
4. Blackwater's Federal Contracts from 2001 through 2006 totaled over $1 billion.
5. Blackwater charges the U.S. government $1,222 per day for services of a private military contractor. This is equivalent to $445,000 per year, over six times more than the cost of an equivalent U.S. soldier.

Read More!

Recognising Faces Across Continents: The Effect of Within-Race Variations on the Own-Race bias in Face Recognition

by

Previous studies have shown that people recognize faces of their own race more accurately than they recognize faces of other races, a finding that has become known as the cross-race effect, or the own-race bias (Malpass & Kravitz, 1969; see Meissner & Brigham, 2001, for a meta analytic review). A number of theoretical explanations for this effect have been proposed (see Sporer, 2001, for a review). One of the most widely accepted explanations for this effect is that poorer recognition of other-race faces may be rooted in the observer’s perceptual learning and the amount of contact that he or she has had with people of other races. An alternative explanation, proposed by Levin (1996) and MacLin and Malpass (2001), suggests that racial categorization occurs automatically and early in the perceptual encounter with faces of another race, taking attention away from individuating characteristics of the face. An own-race recognition bias typically manifests as a disordinal (full crossover) interaction between race of observer and race of face, so that...

Read More!

“Force, Fraud And Fear” Said To Be Accompanying The Recent Upsurge In Use Of Electroshock (E.C.T.)

by

SUMMARY

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is utilized worldwide for various severe and treatment-resistant psychiatric disorders. Research studies have shown that ECT is the most effective and rapid treatment available for elderly patients with depression, bipolar disorder and psychosis. For patients who suffer from intractable catatonia and neuroleptic malignant syndrome, ECT can be life saving. For elderly patients who cannot tolerate or respond poorly to medications and who are at a high risk for drug-induced toxicity or toxic drug interactions, ECT is the safest treatment option. Organic causes are frequently associated with late-life onset of neuropsychiatric conditions, such as parkinsonism, dementia and stroke. ECT has proven to be efficacious even when these conditions are present. During the next decade, research studies should focus on the use of ECT as a synergistic therapy, to enhance other biological and psychological treatments, and prevent symptom relapse and recurrence.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a biological treatment procedure involving a brief application of electric stimulus to produce a generalized seizure. ECT is utilize...

Additional Resource: Current electroconvulsive therapy practice and research in the geriatric population

Read More!

Mugshot Group Size Affects Eyewitness Mugshot Selections

by

When eyewitnesses examine a set of mugshots, the photos can be presented either individually or in groups. The present experiment investigated whether the selection of mugshots is influenced by group size. Participants watched a video of a mock theft, then viewed 180 mugshots either 3, 6, or 12 photos at a time. Selection of the target’s mugshot was not significantly affected by mugshot group size, but participants who viewed three mugshots at a time selected more fillers. In addition, group size had only a small effect on the amount of time taken to inspect mugshots, and participants exhibited a strong tendency to select no more than one mugshot from any single group. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. Witnesses to crimes are often asked to examine mugshots in an attempt to identify potential suspects. Dozens of studies have looked at a variety of factors involved in mugshot procedures, such as methods for filtering mugshots prior to viewing...

Read More!

Examining The Cross-Race Effect Using Racially Ambiguous Faces

by

Abstract

The cross-race effect occurs when other-race faces are more difficult to recognize than same-race faces. This well-known phenomenon poses a problem when eyewitnesses to a crime are required to identify persons of another race. This problem was addressed via a face recognition test using racially ambiguous faces. Fifteen Hispanic (UTEP) students participated in a standard face recognition task. During the encoding phase they were presented with 24 racially ambiguous composite faces (12 "Hispanic" and 12 "black"). During the recognition phase they were presented with 24 "old" and 24 "new" composite faces and asked to identify which faces they had previously seen. Results showed a cross- race effect: participants were more accurate at recognizing same-race faces than other-race faces. These findings suggest that the cross-race effect can be attributed to a perceptual categorization of race...

Read More!