Qanda uses a general architecture for human language technology called Catalyst, (Burger & Mardis 2002, Nyberg et al., to appear). Developed at MITRE for the DARPA TIDES program, the Catalyst architecture is specifically designed for fast processing and for combining the strengths of Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing into a single framework. Catalyst uses a dataflow architec...

The detection of chemicals from safe distances is vital in environments with potentially hazardous or explosive threats, where high sensitivity and fast detection speed are needed. Here we demonstrate standoff detection of several solids, liquids, and gases with single-beam coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering. This approach utilizes a phase coherent ultrabroad-bandwidth femtosecond laser to p...

Standoff laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has previously been used to classify trace residues as either hazardous (explosives, biological, etc.) or benign. Correct classification can become more difficult depending on the surface/substrate underneath the residue due to variations in the laser-material interaction. In addition, classification can become problematic if the substrate ma...

The main objective of the ALERT Phase 2 R3-C component is to develop Vibrational Spectroscopy for photonic standoff detection of highly energetic materials (HEMs): explosives and homemade explosives (HMEs). The expected outcomes of the project are to signifi cantly improve the current state of development of vibrational standoff detection of HEMs/HMEs, in terms of: range (target-observer distan...

In the present research, the effect of standoff distance on corrosion properties of the joint of three aluminum–steel explosive layers has been studied. For this purpose, the samples were welded with various standoff distance under constant explosive load. Optical Microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy were used to measure the quality of the joint and type of interface. Furthermore, point ...

This paper proposes a decentralised vector field guidance algorithm for coordinated standoff tracking of a ground moving target by multiple UAVs. In particular, this study introduces additional adaptive terms in an existing sliding mode control concept for standoff tracking guidance, in order to reduce the effect of unmodelled dynamics and disturbances. Decentralised angular separation control ...

Recently, there has been a significant interest in employing Terahertz (THz) technology, spectroscopy and imaging for standoff detection applications. There are three prime motivations for this interest: (a) THz radiation can detect concealed weapons since many non-metallic, non-polar materials are transparent to THz radiation, (b) target compounds such as explosives, and bio/chemical weapons h...

XML annotations are a widely occurring phenomenon in many application fields, and XML databases should be used to store and query such data. To provide intuitive and fast querying of annotations, we make a case for extending XPath with four new axis steps, that correspond with socalled StandOff joins, introduced here. The new steps can be efficiently implemented using a region index and fast lo...