This paper addresses real-time weapon classification by analysis of asynchronous acoustic data, collected from microphones on a sensor network. The weapon classification algorithm consists of two parts: (i) feature extraction from time-series data using Symbolic Dynamic Filtering (SDF), and (ii) pattern classification based on the extracted features using Language Measure (LM) and Support Vecto...

The U.S. Army holds title to one of the most envied weapon systems developed-the Abrams main battle tank (MBT). Militarily, this weapon represents the epitome of lethality and survivability on today's modern battlefield. To combat difficulties associated with maintaining this sophisticated weapon, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the U.S. Army Ordnance Center and School (OC&S) combin...

We use a game-theoretic model to explore whether volatile chemical (spiroacetal) emissions can serve as a weapon of rearguard action. Our basic model explores whether such emissions serve as a means of temporary withdrawal, preventing the winner of the current round of a contest from translating its victory into permanent possession of a contested resource. A variant of this model explores an a...

The perceived threat of terrorism has persuaded people to accept more and more constraints on their liberties. Airline passengers must partially undress before passing through a metal detector. They must remove from their hand luggage anything appearing on a long list of prohibited items ranging from the obvious (e.g. dynamite) to the bizarre (e.g. snow globes). They accepted, reluctantly, the ...

Bacteria present in natural environments such as soil have evolved multiple strategies to escape predation. We report that natural isolates of Enterobacteriaceae that actively hydrolyze plant-derived aromatic β-glucosides such as salicin, arbutin and esculin, are able to avoid predation by the bacteriovorous amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum and nematodes of multiple genera belonging to the famil...

Insects often release noxious substances for their defence. Larvae of Zygaena filipendulae (Lepidoptera) secrete viscous and cyanogenic glucoside-containing droplets, whose effectiveness was associated with their physical and chemical properties. The droplets glued mandibles and legs of potential predators together and immobilised them. Droplets were characterised by a matrix of an aqueous solu...

The allocation of firing units to hostile targets is an important process within the air defense domain. Many algorithms have been proposed for solving various weapon allocation problems, but evaluation of the performance of such algorithms is problematic, since it does not exist any standard scenarios on which to test the algorithms. It is to a large extent unknown how weapon allocation algori...

The U.S. Army holds title to one of the most envied weapon systems developed-the Abrams main battle tank (MBT). Militarily, this weapon represents the epitome of lethality and survivability on today's modern battlefield. To combat difficulties associated with maintaining this sophisticated weapon, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the U.S. Army Ordnance Center and School (OC&S) combin...

The Front Cover shows chitin-derived oligosaccharides from marine biomass as powerful antimicrobial ‘weapon’ through the ‘booster’ containing formaldehyde. one-pot reaction of chitin with formaldehyde, an inexpensive bulk chemical, methylation and reduction reagent converts to N,N-dimethyl chitosan oligosaccharide (DMCOS), dramatically boosting its ‘damage output’ against fungus. conversion wit...