Hybrid Poisson and multi-Bernoulli filters

The probability hypothesis density (PHD) and multi-target multi-Bernoulli (MeMBer) filters are two leading algorithms that have emerged from random finite sets (RFS). In this paper we study a method which combines these two approaches. Our work is motivated by a sister paper, which proves that the full Bayes RFS filter naturally incorporates a Poisson component representing targets that have never been detected, and a linear combination of multi-Bernoulli components representing targets under track. Here we demonstrate the benefit (in speed of track initiation) that maintenance of a Poisson component of undetected targets provides. Subsequently, we propose a method of recycling, which projects Bernoulli components with a low probability of existence onto the Poisson component (as opposed to deleting them). We show that this allows us to achieve similar tracking performance using a fraction of the number of Bernoulli components (i.e., tracks).Comment: Submitted to 15th International Conference on Information Fusion (2012

An efficient, variational approximation of the best fitting multi-Bernoulli filter

The joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) filter is a popular tracking methodology for problems involving well-spaced targets, but it is rarely applied in problems with closely-spaced targets due to its complexity in these cases, and due to the well-known phenomenon of coalescence. This paper addresses these difficulties using random finite sets (RFSs) and variational inference, deriving a highly tractable, approximate method for obtaining the multi-Bernoulli distribution that minimises the set Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence from the true posterior, working within the RFS framework to incorporate uncertainty in target existence. The derivation is interpreted as an application of expectation-maximisation (EM), where the missing data is the correspondence of Bernoulli components (i.e., tracks) under each data association hypothesis. The missing data is shown to play an identical role to the selection of an ordered distribution in the same ordered family in the set JPDA algorithm. Subsequently, a special case of the proposed method is utilised to provide an efficient approximation of the minimum mean optimal sub-pattern assignment estimator. The performance of the proposed methods is demonstrated in challenging scenarios in which up to twenty targets come into close proximity.Comment: Accepted, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2014.237094

At the pillar of the proverbial Golden Calf: Sacrificing the Need for ‘Responsible Knowing’ on the Altar of a Compliance-Based Ethic

Evidence-based practice (EBP) has been promoted and adopted broadly and has led to advances in health and human services. Notwithstanding the underlying rationale of EBP philosophy to diversify the current body of information concerning evidence-based practices, this paper draws attention to critical thinking fallacies that confound non-evidence-based “treatment as usual” practice with actual EBP philosophy. Flawed belief systems about EBP, in tandem with a compliance-based culture, fail to provide structure to the possibility of evidence-based practice philosophy and proper use of EB treatment modalities. Impediments to EBP implementation are created by lack of “responsible knowing” and this results in practitioner complacency toward means of augmenting effective treatment. However, insofar as EBP implementation confronts tension between ‘responsible knowing’ and compliance-based program culture, it gives way to confusion, misdirection, and complacency towards what can be known about EBP and the information gleaned about it. Effectively limiting important aspects of being a responsible knower in terms of the ability to embody accurate knowledge and practice philosophy. Thus, the compliance-based ethic risks incompatibility with the ethical freedom necessary for responsible knowing and is in constant conflict with the proper implementation of EBP. Keywords: compliance-based ethics, evidence-based practice, fallacies, testimonial injustice, critical thinking, human service

Involuntary Termination from Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Unknown Phantoms, Red Flags, and Unexplained Medical Data

In the United States, all treatment programs receiving public funds are required by law to regularly submit admission and discharge data, inclusive of the forced/involuntary termination or administrative discharge of clients, to their local state authorities. In some states, this requirement even extends to programs not receiving public funds. The aim of collecting discharge data—collected under the auspices of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association [SAMHSA]—is to assist state and county authorities, funders, and accreditors to monitor recovery-focused program performance. However, investigation here undertaken shows that published discharge data from many state treatment settings are perennially and grossly underreported or misreported. This paper reports on evidence that point to systemic failure of regulatory supervision of treatment settings and the ethical breach in duty and consequent legal culpability in reporting medical data. Policy and practice implications are discussed

Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: \u3cem\u3eKiyemba v. Obama\u3c/em\u3e and the Meaning of Freedom, Separation of Powers, and the Rule of Law Ten Years After 9/11

This article is about the rise and fall of continued adherence to the rule of law, proper application of the separation of powers doctrine, and the meaning of freedom for a group of seventeen Uighurs—a Turkic Muslim ethnic minority whose members reside in the Xinjiang province of China—who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base since 2002. Most scholars regard the trilogy of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumediene v. Bush as demonstrating the Supreme Court’s willingness to uphold the rule of law during the war on terror. The recent experience of the Uighurs suggest that this commitment is either waning or was never as strong as scholars thought. About a year and a half before the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States Supreme Court was primed to hear oral arguments in the Uighurs’ case known as Kiyemba v. Obama. The issue in this case was whether the Uighurs, who were concededly being detained illegally, would be released from Guantanamo Bay. As a result of the government’s latest delay tactics, the Court never heard the merits of the case. Had it done so, the Court, arguably, would have established the contours of a constitutionally required habeas remedy for foreign nationals whose indefinite detention had been judicially declared illegal and no other option but release into the continental interior of the United States is possible. The Court’s dismissal of the Uighurs previously granted cert petition thus signaled the beginning of the end of the Court’s landmark “war-on–terror” line of precedential cases culminating in the evisceration of its 2008 seminal case of Boumediene v. Bush. With the D. C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision now reinstated in which the court had held in 2009 that habeas courts had no jurisdiction to order the release of foreign nationals under such circumstances because it was an immigration case triggering the political branches’ plenary power over which such matters are largely immune from judicial intervention. But Kiyemba v. Obama is not an immigration case. The Uighurs were brought here involuntarily as a result of the government’s counterterrorism policies, the implementation of which the Court had declared unlawful over the course of a four year period beginning with Rasul v. Bush in 2004. The D.C. Circuit Court holding, which still stands, was erroneous because the Uighurs never sought to immigrate to this country; their filing of writs of habeas corpus placed the matter solidly in the area of granting constitutionally required habeas relief which a habeas court has jurisdiction to decide. Through political machinations and influences at all levels of government, however, the Supreme Court has more recently decided to end its role of protecting the individual rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees with a series of denials of cert.-petitions without a single dissent authored to voice concerns about the beginning of the end of the Republic Benjamin Franklin once said we had but only if we could keep it. And although most of the original group of Uighurs has subsequently been relocated to other countries, the two still remaining have now entered their second decade of unlawful detention

Price Discovery in Multiple-Dealer Markets: The Case of the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market

Price discovery is a principal function of financial markets. Yet, especially for dealership markets, financial economists know little about how prices are determined. In this paper I analyze the process of price discovery in the multiple-dealer, interbank spot market for foreign exchange. I use DM/$ quotes to calculate interbank dealers’ “information shares,” their proportional contributions to the variance of innovations in the implicit, efficient exchange rate. These information shares are used to analyze relationships between price discovery and dealer characteristics. Unlike the U.S. equity markets, where regional exchanges contribute relatively little to price discovery, less-active interbank dealers play a large role, impounding most of the information into quotes. A pooled analysis of dealers’ intraday information shares indicates that the lower the relative bid-ask spread and the greater the number of regional foreign exchange branches, the higher is a dealer’s contribution to price discovery. Dealer nationality, however, does not appear related to price discovery within dealers’ domestic markets.

A canopy-related stratification of a southern pine forest using LANDSAT digital data

An investigation was undertaken to determine if a consistent stratification of a Southern pine forest could be obtained by using LANDSAT multispectral scanner data to assess crown closure. Winter and summer LANDSAT scenes of the North Carolina coastal region were analyzed individually and then registered and merged to take advantage of temporal changes in the forest canopy. Three levels of pine crown closure were accurately delineated. The applicability of this stratification as supplemental input to a forest inventory system is also discussed