Signal Detection Theory (SDT) has been applied to examine expertise-related differences in perceptual judgments of deceptive and non-deceptive movements in sport (e.g., handball, soccer). Deceptive actions in sport-related tasks (i.e., faking in rugby, fake passes in basketball) affects anticipation performance in both novice and expert athletes (i.e., more incorrect responses in deceptive actions compared to incorrect responses in non-deceptive actions); however, experts still outperform novices when facing deceptive actions in sport-related tasks (Güldenpenning, Kunde, & Weigelt, 2017). To date, this approach has not yet been applied to shoot/don’t shoot scenarios in law enforcement. To address this issue, we filmed actors pulling out either a weapon (i.e., gun) or a non-weapon (i.e., cell phone). We then edited the videos to create temporally-occluded stimuli. College students observed the videos and indicated whether the object was a weapon or a non-weapon. We conducted two experiments: across both we found that participants’ responses were more likely to be correct at later occlusion points, when the object was fully observable. We also found that when the object was fully observable, participants were more likely to identify the object as a gun rather than a cell phone. The results can inform the design of decision-making training for police.

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Heritability is a basic genetic parameter for quantitative traits that may determine their selection generation and intensity as well as predict their selection response and efficiency in plant breeding. Estimation of heritability varies based on experimental design. The type 2 modified augmented design (MAD2) as an unbalanced experimental design, has been proposed for evaluating numerous unreplicated test genotypes with several replicated control genotypes to adjust for soil heterogeneity. Here, we define an inter-environment correlation ( ), that is, the mean Pearson's correlation coefficient of trait performance for test genotypes between all pairs of environments, to approximate broad-sense heritability ( . Computer simulation and empirical results demonstrated that was consistent with estimates on a plot basis by ANOVA for non-missing data sets, and similar to those by the restricted maximum likelihood (REML)-based method for missing data sets. The method was shown to generally outperform the ANOVA-and REML-based methods.

Cyber attackers commonly operate in teams, which may process information collectively and thus, may be best understood when the team is treated as the unit of analysis. Future research in Oppositional Human Factors (OHF) should consider the impact of team-influencing and team-level biases and the impact that defensive interventions have on team cognition in general. Existing measurement approaches using team interactions may be well suited for studying red teams, and how OHF interventions impact cyber attackers.

The plethora of potential homemade explosive (HME) formulations combined with the fact they often exhibit large critical diameters make them expensive to characterize with traditional large-scale tests. A relatively new method for small-scale characterization was investigated using non-ideal explosive charges consisting of ammonium nitrate (AN) and various fuels. Here, we extend this method using an optical characterization technique that utilizes the decay rate of the reaction wave velocity in failing detonations of sub-critical diameter charges as a metric for the shock sensitivity of an explosive. The conditions required for successful detonation initiation and failure have long been used to investigate shock sensitivity (critical diameter, gap tests, run-to-detonation experiments); however, the failure regime still remains largely unexplored. The utility of this small-scale characterization technique lies in its ability to determine the relative shock sensitivity of explosive with minimal material and experiments while simultaneously providing transient velocity data for potential use in modeling efforts. In this work, high speed imaging was used and analyzed to determine rates of reaction wave velocity decay in the AN-fuel samples. Among the fuels tested with AN were diesel (ANFO), nitromethane (ANNM), and aluminum (ANÀ Al). It was found that nitromethane was the most effective at sensitizing the AN of the systems considered. In both ANNM and ANÀ Al, maximum shock sensitivity (here measured as the minimum reactive wave velocity decay rate) occurred at fuel percentages below stoichiometric mixtures. This was interpreted to be due to the competing effects of stoichiometry and hot spot criticality. Sensitivity results were compared to run-to-failure (RTF) distances and published critical diameter trends which showed good correlation.

The few perceptual–cognitive expertise and deception studies in the domain of law enforcement have yet to examine perceptual–cognitive expertise differences of police trainees and police officers. The current study uses methods from the perceptual–cognitive expertise and deception models. Participants watched temporally occluded videos of actors honestly drawing a weapon and deceptively drawing a non-weapon from a concealed location on their body. Participants determined if the actor was holding a weapon or a non-weapon. Using signal-detection metrics—sensitivity and response bias—we did not find evidence of perceptual–cognitive expertise; performance measures did not differ significantly between police trainees and experienced officers. However, consistent with the hypotheses, we did find that both police trainees and police officers became more sensitive in identifying the object as occlusion points progressed. Additionally, we found that across police trainees and police officers, their response bias became more liberal (i.e., more likely to identify the object as a weapon) as occlusion points progressed. This information has potential impacts for law enforcement practices and additional research.

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