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Models and Methods for Workforce Planning Under Uncertainty: Optimizing U.S. Army Cyber Branch Readiness and Manning
No full textThis work examines the problem of optimally resourcing personnel for a new set of U.S. Army cyber-specialty career fields using a combination of personnel accessions and inter-career-field transfers that are limited to occur over a subset of periods early within a 30-year career cycle. This workforce planning problem is bounded by constraints respectively pertaining to organizational needs for personnel, as well as personnel promotion policies. Complicating the problem are stochastic retention rates for every combination of year and promotion level within each career field over the 30-year period. Upon formalizing this Cyber Workforce Planning Problem (CWPP) within the framework of multiple performance goals, this study formulates, tests, and compares three frameworks to seek optimal workforce planning decisions under uncertainty: two stochastic programming (SP) variants and a robust optimization (RO) representation. Upon sampling the stochastic parametric distributions to generate a set of collectively representative, deterministic scenarios, the SP variants respectively leverage a scenario-based Monte Carlo approach and sample average approximation, whereas the RO model examines robust solutions over a range of decision-maker risk attitudes. A sensitivity analysis applied to the first of the SP variants indicates the solutions are relatively insensitive to different prioritizations of goals, and identifies policy insights to help recruit and retain personnel. Comparative testing of the three methodologies yields workforce planning recommendations that are relatively consistent across solution methodologies and identify concerns to inform changes to personnel policies
Beyond Traditional Architecture for MDO Applications: the Erlang VM and its Potential
No full textIn order to scale for speed, technology often builds upon the earliest proven systems and architectures. As the context changes, from a civilian application domain to a military application domain, the priority of functional requirements can and often do change. The hardware, software, and language development environment set the foundation for the constraints and potential of a system. This along with the fact the information technology revolution, since early 2000, has primarily been driven by the commercial sector, requires engineers to consider whether nontraditional, less well-known architectures may have a role in the Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) application space. This paper will highlight features inherent to traditional architectures, the challenges associated with these architectural features, and how the Erlang VM represents an opportunity to develop an architectural foundation suitable to the MDO application domain. Finally, this paper will highlight a future technology concept integrating demonstrated neural interface technology with an Erlang VM supported architecture. This foundation will help enable human-machine teaming by empowering a human agent to interact with sensors and AI-enabled autonomous systems with a dynamic user interface allowing the human agent to accomplish MDO applications. The great potential for the concept depends on a fault-tolerant, distributed system permitted by the Erlang VM to exibly integrate the capabilities required to address the diverse challenges of a complex operating environment
Four Myths about Russian Grand Strategy
No full textAfter spending most of the 1990s and early 2000s rebuilding their state, regime, economy, and military after the traumatic Soviet collapse, Russia’s return to a central—and often disruptive—place in world politics has laid bare the folly of many scholars and policymakers who ignored Russia during those years or dismissively argued that the country was irrelevant in a post-9/11 world focused on counterterrorism and sectarian violence in the Middle East. Perhaps owing to this neglect, Russia’s resurgence in the twenty-first century has resulted in a large number of misconceptions about its objectives in international politics. This paper seeks to clear up some of those misconceptions by identifying and dispelling four common myths about Russian grand strategy
Hyper-Enabled Operator: Situational Awareness as Armor
No full textThe Hyper-Enabled Operator (HEO) project seeks to increase the survivability of special forces operators through increased situational awareness (SA) capabilities. The precursor to HEO was the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) which sought to protect operators during room clearing operations by increasing their armor coverage. This study used combat modeling to compare the benefits of HEO to TALOS. This project developed four base models, each based on a relevant mission set. Each base model was compared against two variant models. The first variant provided the operators with enhanced SA. The second variant increased operator armor coverage without a performance degradation from increased weight. For some scenarios the incorporation of SA increased survivability more than a large increase in armor. Further, the study found that enhancing SA increases survivability by 8.3% on average for the four mission sets; this increase is similar to increasing armor coverage by a factor of four
Energy-Efficient Analysis of Synchrophasor Data using the NVIDIA Jetson Nano
No full textSmart Grid Technology is an important part of increasing resilience and reliability of power grids. Applying Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) to obtain synchronized phasor measurements, or synchrophasors, provides more detailed, higher fidelity data that can enhance situational awareness by rapidly detecting anomalous conditions. However, sample rates of PMUs are up to three orders of magnitude faster than traditional telemetry, resulting in large datasets that require novel computing methods to process the data quickly and efficiently. This work aims to improve calculation speed and energy efficiency of anomaly detection by leveraging manycore computing on a NVIDIA Jetson Nano. This work translates an existing PMU anomaly detection scheme into a novel GPU-compute algorithm and compares the computational performance and energy efficiency of the GPU approach to serial and multicore CPU methods. The GPU algorithm was benchmarked on a real dataset of 11.3 million measurements derived from 8 PMUs from a 1:1000 scale emulation of a power grid, and two additional datasets derived from the original dataset. Results show that the GPU detection scheme is up to 51.91 times faster than the serial method, and over 13 times faster than the multicore method. Additionally, the GPU approach exhibits up to 92.3% run-time energy reduction compared to serial method and 78.4% reduction compared to the multicore approach
Passive Quadrupedal Gait Synchronization for Extra Robotic Legs Using a Dynamically Coupled Double Rimless Wheel Model
Get PDFThe Extra Robotic Legs (XRL) system is a robotic augmentation worn by a human operator consisting of two articulated robot legs that walk with the operator and help bear a heavy backpack payload. It is desirable for the Human- XRL quadruped system to walk with the rear legs lead the front by 25% of the gait period, minimizing the energy lost from foot impacts while maximizing balance stability. Unlike quadrupedal robots, the XRL cannot command the human’s limbs to coordinate quadrupedal locomotion. Using a pair of Rimless Wheel models, it is shown that the systems coupled with a spring and damper converge to the desired 25% phase difference. A Poincar´e return map was generated using numerical simulation to examine the convergence properties to different coupler design parameters, and initial conditions. The Dynamically Coupled Double Rimless Wheel system was physically realized with a spring and dashpot chosen from the theoretical results, and initial experiments indicate that the desired synchronization properties may be achieved within several steps using this set of passive components alone
Optimum waist circumference-height indices for evaluating adult adiposity: An analytic review.
No full textPhenotyping adults for excess adiposity and related health risks usually include three body size measurements: height, weight and waist circumference (WC). Height and weight are now widely used as components of the body shape measure, body mass index (BMI, weight/heigh
The Influence of Self-Reported Tobacco Use on Baseline Concussion Assessments.
No full textINTRODUCTION: Baseline symptom, balance, and neurocognitive scores have become an integral piece of the concussion management process. Factors such as sleep, learning disorders, fitness level, and sex have been linked to differences in performance on baseline assessments; however, it is unclear how tobacco use may affect these scores. The objective of this study was to compare baseline concussion assessment scores between service academy cadets who use and do not use tobacco.
METHODS: Cadets completed a standard battery of concussion baseline assessments per standard of care and were classified into two groups: tobacco users (n = 1,232) and nonusers (n = 5,922). Dependent variables included scores on the Balance Error Scoring System, Standardized Assessment of Concussion, Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT), Brief Symptom Inventory-18, and Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS). Separate Mann-Whitney U-tests were used to compare all baseline assessment scores between groups with an adjusted P-value \u3c 0.004.
RESULTS: Cadets that used tobacco performed significantly worse on the impulse control (P \u3c 0.001) section of the ImPACT, reported greater ImPACT symptom severity scores (P \u3c 0.001), and were more likely to take risks as measured by the BSSS (P \u3c 0.001). No differences were detected for Balance Error Scoring System, Standardized Assessment of Concussion, Brief Symptom Inventory-18, and Sport Concussion Assessment Tool-3 symptom scores, verbal memory, visual memory, visual-motor speed, or reaction time on the ImPACT (P \u3e 0.004).
CONCLUSIONS: Tobacco users performed significantly worse than tobacco nonusers on the impulse control section of the ImPACT, reported greater symptom severity scores on the ImPACT, and were more likely to take risks as measured by the BSSS. Despite statistical significance, these results should be interpreted with caution, as the overall effect sizes were very small. Future research should examine the influence of tobacco use on recovery post-concussion
Efficacy of Learning with Course-provided Equation Reference Sheets in Engineering Education
Get PDFThis paper studies the efficacy of course-provided reference sheets on student learning when allowing reference material on exams versus other methods. Moving from student-provided note sheets to course-provided note sheets reduced the course exam failure rate from 11.8% to 0%. In previous iterations of ME388 Helicopter Aeronautics exam resources varied from student-provided note sheets to open-book exams with several iterations taking some combination of the two. Another course in the department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the United States Military Academy, MC311 Thermal-Fluid Systems I, inspired this research with its long-standing success with a course-provided 8½ x 11” front-and-back equation reference card used for over 20 iterations with positive results, affectionately named and referred to as the RDC for Reference Data Card, although it contains almost entirely equations, not data. Thus, the ME388 course instructors piloted a two-page course-provided equation sheet to students taking ME388 Helicopter Aeronautics at the beginning of the spring semester in the 2020 Academic Year with the goal of simplifying the teaching model and attempting to help students avoid common mistakes made during previous iterations of the course that used various formats of closed- and open-book exams. This paper will introduce the concept of closed- and open-reference teaching and assessment methods including a canvas of academic literature on related research. Motivation for the inclusion of the course-provided equation reference sheet determined from course feedback collected from previous iterations is analyzed and discussed. Current students are surveyed to gain insight into the students’ comfort with the material and gain anecdotal results on the method. Next, the aspects of designing and implementing the reference material are discussed with thoughts on layout, which equations to include, which data to include, and how to incorporate the reference material into daily instruction. Student feedback is analyzed with discussion on any adjustments made thereafter along with applicable justification from student feedback. Finally, a conclusive evaluation is determined from a synthesis of anecdotal evidence, Likert scale feedback, and exam grade comparison to previous iterations. This is weighed against the literature from other academic research and a discussion of the merits and disadvantages of allowing reference material on exams. The paper concludes with a final determination on the pilot program’s efficacy on student learning when implementing a course-provided equation reference sheet and recommendations for future work